NC Constitution Party’s effort to get on ballot hits technical snag
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — It was April 1 when the Constitution Party of North Carolina walked into the North Carolina State Board of Elections with what they believed to be more than the 13,865 signatures needed to be recognized as a party and get on the fall ballot.
As any third party or individual can, they referred to the petition page on the State Board’s website for any updates. Constitution Party Chairman Al Pisano saw what he thought was a discrepancy in total signatures.
After inquiring about the issue, an attorney for the N.C. State Board of Elections emailed Pisano saying there was an error in how the petition tracker, that’s posted online, pulled in the number of verified signatures from the county Boards of Election.
The email stated in part: “As part of that review, the numbers of signatures your organization submitted to and were validated by the county boards of elections is double-checked against what is listed on the petition tracker on the State Board’s website. Bear in mind that the petition tracker on the website is merely an indicator provided for public benefit and does not establish, legally, the status of a petition campaign.”
“So this really put us behind it, really. They they really injured us in that way. So we’re under the crunch time now where we should not have been,” said Pisano.
In a statement to CBS 17 NCSBE said “This was an innocent coding error in the State Board’s petition module. As the State Board’s legal team noted in an email to party representatives, our online tracker pulled in data from a previous effort by the party to gain recognition, but those old signatures are no longer valid. Whenever a party submits signatures for recognition, it is the party’s responsibility to ensure they have enough signatures to reach the threshold set in law. The party has until 5 p.m. May 17 to submit the required number of signatures to county boards of elections.”
Pisano told CBS 17 that if they had known that earlier, then volunteers could have spent the last two weeks trying to get enough signatures to make up the difference.
“The workers the workers themselves that we’ve dealt with, they’re doing the best they can do with the burdens placed on them and the lack of resources given to them by the legislature. The process needs to be refined to where it could be a lot more streamlined for the petitioners and a lot easier on the employees trying that are tasked with trying to handle this cumbersome process,” said Pisano.
Pisano is hopeful they will be able to make the deadline.
“We’re going to overcome it, but it’s going to be more difficult, they’ve made it a lot more difficult for us to do that,” he said.
If the Constitution Party collects the amount of necessary verified signatures the State Board will meet to consider recognizing the party. If it does, the party could nominate candidates for the 2024 general election during their party convention.
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