Durham County has Received Bipartisan Scorn for Mishandling Elections | Eastern NC Now

In the 2016 general election, electronic errors, glitches and untrained staff caused major problems that received bipartisan scorn.

ENCNow
Press Release:

"Durham historically hasn't figured out how to carry out an election properly." - Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens


    In the 2016 general election, electronic errors, glitches and untrained staff caused major problems that received bipartisan scorn. Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens even stated in a recent hearing on the problems, "Durham historically hasn't figured out how to carry out an election properly." (, 11/10/2016)

    NCGOP Attorney Thomas Stark filed a formal protest with the Durham County Board of Elections for 'malfeasance' in tabulating vote (News & Observer, 11/12/2016)

    In March 2016 primary election, Durham county mishandled 1,900 provisional ballots, forcing the state to allow eligible voters to recast their ballots months later. Reports say that the case was referred to the State Bureau of Investigation. (WRAL, 5/5/2016; News & Observer, 5/31/2016; Indy Week, 11/9/2016)

    The liberal group Democracy NC has criticized Durham County for election issues: "the center received a high volume of calls from Durham County, where check-in machines at some polling sites had glitches early Tuesday. The county board of elections then ordered all polling sites to transition to paper roll books to check in voters. The glitches caused concerns throughout the county, especially after the Bethesda Ruritan Club precinct in Durham ran out of paper authorization-to-vote forms and had to delay voting for more than an hour and a half." (Huffington Post, 11/11/2016)

    Issues in Durham County prompted the NAACP to call for a new election: "NAACP officials want the State Board of Elections to order a new Durham County primary, saying the board failed to sufficiently scrutinize election results" (News & Observer, 7/6/2016)

  • Contact: McCrory 2016 Press
  •     govpress@nc.gov

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