You can’t just go and vote in place of a family member.
A Lenoir County poll worker is accused of doing just that during the 2010 general election. According to county Board of Elections minutes, the worker pulled the master list, removed the necessary label, grabbed a ballot and proceeded to vote in place of a member of the family.
Details as to the worker, the precinct and the candidate to whom those votes would have gone are not being released, as the case remains under investigation two and a half years later.
The board was informed of the incident at its Nov. 12, 2010, meeting, and sent the case on to the State Board of Elections.
“We turned it over to them and they handled it from there,” former LCBOE Chairman Robert Waller said. “We’re not in it. We stayed out of it. They took care of it.”
From there, an SBOE investigator pursued the case, taking statements from elections director Dana King and other poll workers.
Then the case moved along again.
“It’s my understanding that that matter was referred to the D.A. for your prosecutorial district,” SBOE Elections Liaison Veronica Degraffenreid said.
She added that the state board hands over matters to prosecutors when criminal action is involved.
District Attorney Branny Vickory said the investigation remains open but couldn’t yet say if there will be further action resulting from its findings.
King said the D.A.’s office asked recently if there was more information at hand.
“There has not been anything done yet,” King said. “I do know that the D.A.’s office sent a letter asking a few questions to State Board (of Elections), and State Board referred it to me as a reply, so I’d know what was going on — several weeks ago, five weeks ago, maybe.
“But I have not heard anything else if it has been finalized. I have not received anything about what they’re planning to do, or anything that I know of yet.”
A local couple also made an attempt at voter fraud the same Election Day. They sent in absentee ballots, then showed up to their proper precinct, but one poll worker didn’t check to make sure they had already voted.
When prevented from voting by another poll worker, they said they did it just to see if they could.
The voter ID bill in the General Assembly that recently passed the House of Representatives, which backers say would prevent voter fraud, would not have applied in either case. The matter of the poll worker amounts to an inside job, and the couple were accurately identified by a poll worker who made a mistake in not further checking if they had already voted by other means.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.