LUMBERTON — With almost 900 provisional ballots still to be counted, Robeson County election officials say the race results in Tuesday’s primary elections could change.
According to Steve Stone, chairman of the Robeson County Board of Elections, a total of 861 provisional ballots were cast countywide during the 10-day early voting period and on March 15, the day of the primary. The ballots are being reviewed this weekend by elections board staff to determine their eligibility to be cast.
“The problem is that until these ballots are reviewed, we still don’t know how many of them will be deemed entirely eligible, and how many of the ballots will be found only partially eligible,” said Stone. Stone said that the eligible provisional ballots will be counted on Tuesday before canvassing of all the votes is to start at 11 a.m.
This was the first election that voters were required to present a state approved photo ID when they went to the polls to cast their ballots.
“People responded pretty good to the new regulation,” said Tina Bledsoe, a Robeson County Board of Elections employee. “But of course they have been being preached to about the new law for about two years.”
Although provisional votes could determine the results in several races, their potential to change a result is most evident in four races.
In the school board race that had 10 candidates vying for three at-large seats, incumbent Jo Ann Lowery missed keeping a seat on the board by finishing fourth, only 73 votes behind the third place vote-getter, incumbent Randy Lawson.
In the do-over Precinct 7 Lumberton City Council race, incumbent Leon Maynor is holding onto a 16-vote margin over challenger Laura Sampson. If provisional votes, challenges and protests bring the two candidates within 1 percent of each other, a candidate could request a recount.
According to Stone, the Board of Elections will hear 50 residency challenges filed by Maynor beginning at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.
“The state Board of Elections says we have to get these challenges resolved before we can move on and count provisional ballots and canvass election results,” Stone said.
In the District 4 race for school board, Charles Bullard appears to have defeated incumbent Bosco Locklear by 28 votes. A third candidate in that race, Harold Hunt, did not receive enough votes to benefit from the provisional ballots not yet counted.
The state mandated do-over election for the mayor of Pembroke resulted in Greg Cummings defeating challenger Allen Dial by 10 votes. According to the vote count, absentee balloting and one-stop voting accounted for a majority of the votes cast.
While there was a significant demand by voters for provisional ballots, according to Bledsoe, this year’s primary saw significantly fewer voters take advantage of provisional voting than in other recent primaries when presidential candidates were on the ballot.
In May 2012, the last presidential primary, 1,402 provisional ballots were cast in Robeson County. The number of provisional ballots cast in May 2008 was 1,626.
G.L. Pridgen, director of the Board of Elections, said he believes the photo ID requirement to cast ballots at the polls cut down on the number of voters needing to use provisional ballots.
“Most of the folks did have some kind of photo ID or other accepted form of identification,” Pridgen said. “That was not always the case in the past.”
