RALEIGH, N.C. (WGHP) – Don’t include North Carolina among the states where there continues to be wrangling about election results.
The NC Board of Elections unanimously certified the results of the 2022 election, meaning that Ted Budd is your new Senator, Kathy Manning is returning to Congress, and everyone else who had been announced as winners were so without question.
The board voted, 5-0, to “canvass” the votes on all ballot items, the BOE announced Tuesday. That means all votes had been collected and tabulated correctly.
“After extremely hard work by county elections offices across North Carolina, today we made sure that the votes of 3.8 million North Carolinians counted in 2022,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a release announcing the affirmation.
She said that there were six close races that the BOE confirmed were counted correctly. All results are posted for public review.
Although there were no complaints filed about voting or results in the Piedmont Triad, you may recall that Rockingham County Elections Director Paula Seamster had elevated concerns during early voting about misinformation being spread. That included rumors of faked and lost ballots.
“The rumors that were being said early on died down after the interviews [with media],” Seamster said via email this week. “We did not hear any more rumors. If individuals had any questions after that, they called our office and were given correct information.
“We did not have anyone to file a formal protest.”
There was a complaint filed about signs at polling precincts in Guilford County that had no direct correlation to the electoral process. Board of Commissioners candidate Alan Branson complained that the signs may have been a third-party endorsement too close to a voting precinct and violated campaign finance law.
Charlie Collicutt, the Guilford County elections director, said at the time that this issue strictly was a matter for the North Carolina BOE because it’s a “finance complaint.” The BOE has not responded to his complaint.
Otherwise, there were no obvious issues during the voting and counting, and that seemed to resonate with the public.
Public confidence poll
A High Point University Poll found that 8 out of 10 adults in North Carolina have confidence in the state’s elections, and about 1 in 3 (32%) have “a lot of confidence.”
About 1 in 5 respondents said they were satisfied with the candidates chosen – 69% were at least somewhat satisfied – but they also saw the worsening divide among the public, perhaps exacerbated by an increase in mud-slinging political ads (42% said there was more).
Divided public
More than half of those surveyed (54%) say Americans are more divided than they have been, and another 27% say there has been no change. If you focus strictly on North Carolinians, 35% see more division.
Only about 1 in 10 (11%) say they expect relationships to get better between Republicans and Democrats in either Raleigh or Washington, and 64% see the parties as working against each other in DC and 48% see that in Raleigh.
Nearly half of respondents (48%) say Congress is responsible for repairing this issue, and 29% put that on the to-do list of President Joe Biden.
Source: Fox 8 News Channel
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