Boards of elections in Halifax, Warren and Northampton counties voted this week to dismiss election protests from longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Wray. Wray has also called for a recount in all three counties, which make up the 27th N.C. House District. 

The 20-year House veteran filed the election protests last Friday, alleging that wrong ballots, erroneous counting and unlawful electioneering should be investigated. Rodney Pierce, a teacher from Halifax County, currently leads Wray by 35 votes out of almost 12,000. 

There is no Republican running in the 27th District, so the outcome of next week’s recounts will determine who heads to Raleigh in January.    

After filing election protests, Wray filed for a recount in all three counties on Monday. 

State law allows a candidate to call for a recount if the difference in votes between the candidates is less than 1%. The current difference in this race is 0.3%. 

The recount is scheduled for Thursday in Northampton County. The Northampton Board of Elections will be conducting recounts in two other close races in the county, one for a school board seat and another for the county commission. 

Halifax County will conduct its recount March 22, and Warren will follow March 25. 

“The gap in this race has narrowed since Election Day as the counties have added provisional ballots. We are looking forward to the results of the recount,” Wray said in a statement shared by his attorney, Bruce Thompson. 

The recounts will be conducted using voting machines. If it does not change the results, Wray can request a second recount by hand. But if the results do change, Pierce can ask for another recount by hand. 

Wray’s election protests challenged what happened with more than a dozen ballots and accused a poll observer of illegal electioneering. 

In each of the three protests, Wray was not calling for a new election, instead for corrections to be made to the vote count and irregularities to be investigated, according to the protest documents. 

Preliminary hearings took place in all three counties this week. The point of the hearings was simply to determine whether to dismiss the protests or move them forward to another hearing where evidence would be presented. 

In Northampton County, Wray’s protest claimed that a voter only had her ballot partially counted because she was given the wrong ballot. A registered Democrat attempted to use a Republican ballot, which is not allowed in primaries under state law. The protest says that because the voter was provided with the wrong ballot, and has voted as a Democrat in the past six elections, she should be allowed to cast a full Democratic ballot.

Northampton County Board of Elections Director Spinosa Clements said that the voter did try to vote with a Republican ballot, and was told that was not allowed. When offered a provisional ballot, which would have let her cast a full ballot, she refused and said she had changed her registration to Republican. 

Spinosa said there was no paperwork indicating the party change, and that the voter still refused to use the correct ballot. While her votes in nonpartisan races were counted, her votes for Republicans were not, following state election law. 

In a hearing on Monday, the Board of Elections unanimously dismissed the protest. 

“It was dismissed based on the fact that the voter actually chose to vote a ballot other than the Democratic ballot,” Clements said.

In a statement after the decision in Northampton County, Pierce said: “I am grateful that in their meeting today, the Northampton County Board of Elections unanimously dismissed Michael Wray’s false election claims, and I look forward to the boards in Warren and Halifax doing the same. The voters of HD-27 deserve to have their voices heard.”

Clements said she expects the recount in Northampton County will take about five hours. 

In Warren County, Wray alleged that three Democrats were given Republican ballots. He also claimed that several ballots were not counted when they should have been.

The protest claims that one voter inserted her completed ballot into the machine during early voting, yet did not see the number of ballots increase on the display. 

In a hearing Tuesday, Warren County Board of Elections Director Debbie Formyduval presented research on the allegations in the protest. After hearing the protests, the board unanimously decided to dismiss them. County Board of Election officials said there was no credible reason to move the protest forward. 

In Halifax County, Wray claimed that three Democrats were given Republican ballots and that several provisional ballots were not counted that should have been. He also said a poll worker for the Halifax Democratic party was handing out sample ballots instructing voters to vote for Rodney Pierce, Wray’s opponent.

A state law passed last session gives partisan observers more freedom to move around the voting place, but they are not allowed to interfere with voters or conduct electioneering inside the voting place. 

In a hearing Tuesday, the Halifax County Board of Elections dismissed the claims of wrong ballots and erroneous counting. It also dismissed the charge over illegal electioneering, finding no evidence that the poll observer was inside the voting area. It also found no evidence that voters received the wrong ballots. 

“We are disappointed that the protests were dismissed but appreciate each county board’s consideration. Our focus has been to ensure that every vote is counted. That is why we asked the counties to review those ballots,” Wray’s attorney said in a statement. 

Wray can still appeal the protests from all three counties to the State Board of Elections, but has not said whether he will. 

Steven Greene, a political science professor at N.C. State University, said that while they might be called protests, this case is completely different from other election challenges.

“I don't feel like in the end, Wray is questioning the legitimacy of our election systems,” Greene said. “I think he's saying here are specific mistakes made, maybe even just human error, but that might be enough to be worth 35 votes to me.”

Greene also said that the protests and recounts are one way for Wray, first elected in 2005, to try to stay in office. 

“Roughly 20 years serving in the state legislature, and it's got to be hard to think that you're 30 votes away from losing that,” Greene said. “If there's legal, reasonable mechanisms that you can pursue, kind of like every opportunity to make sure you hold on to that political office, I can certainly see why somebody would do that.”    

Wray, who serves as chairman of the finance committee, is one of the most conservative Democrats in the legislature. According to an analysis from N.C. Newsline, the average Democrat in the General Assembly voted with the Republican majority 66% of the time in 2023. Wray voted with Republicans 88% of the time, including on the state budget, which Gov. Roy Cooper did not sign, and to overturn several of Cooper’s vetoes. 

Pierce, who at one point served on the governor’s Teacher Advisory Committee, was endorsed by the Progressive Caucus of the N.C. Democratic Party and Carolina Forward, another progressive group. 

Those groups, and other Democratic ones, have denounced Wray’s protests and calls for recounts, and are urging him to concede. Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, called Pierce representative-elect in a video.

“We want to be clear: while he has the right to request a recount, it is clear that the outcome will not change. Representative-elect Rodney D. Pierce will represent Warren, Halifax and Northampton counties come January 2025. We call on Rep. Michael Wray to concede,” said Young Democrats of N.C. in a statement. 

Wray would not be the only moderate Democrat in the state to lose a primary if the result in his race holds. Sen. Mike Woodard of Durham lost to a progressive challenger, Sophia Chitlik, who once worked in the Obama administration.

Greene said the election of progressives in deeply blue districts is the result of people voting for candidates who more closely represent the Democratic Party.

“I think it reflects a genuine change in the Democratic Party, and that there's a real, ascendancy might be a little strong, but relatively speaking, of people on the more progressive side of the party willing to flex their electoral muscles a little more,” Greene said.