It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. We start off in Anson County this morning as the Board of Elections there has formally filed a petition with the North Carolina State Board of Elections to remove their current election director, Sherry Melton. The board also recently voted to terminate the deputy director of elections as well.
The relatively newly seated Republican majority took action after what members describe as years of election administration failures that went unaddressed by the prior Democratic-controlled state and local board of election. According to sources familiar with the case, the failures amount to serious violations of election law, including recently discovered failures in ballot security, unlawful voter assistance, interference with board authority, and repeated violation of election law going back more than five years. The petition and supporting evidence of filed submitted a file submitted to the North Carolina State Board of Elections will remain confidential unless the director is removed for cause.
However, sources familiar with the investigation say that Anson County and the board there have accused Melton of the following. Failure to execute lawful board directives and conduct undermining the board's ability to perform its duties. Interference with the statutory duties of the Anson County Board of Elections. Mismanagement and dishonesty affecting election administration, as well as conduct unbecoming of an election official and county employee. Melton told Carolina Journal over the phone Tuesday that she has filed a response to the allegations directly with the North Carolina State Board of Elections, but was unwilling to share or make the response public and provide those details to Carolina Journal.
That is now, all of that information is now with the Executive Director of the State Board, Sam Hayes. Review of public records, sworn affidavits, meeting minutes, complaints, and internal correspondence examined by Carolina Journal paints a troubling picture of election administration in Anson County stretching back to at least 2020 when Melton became the director. Among the conflicts, we'll start off there. In November of 2020, U.S. Representative Dan Bishop publicly accused Melton and county election officials of allowing improper assistance to voters during early voting and demanded the release of surveillance footage that he claimed would substantiate those claims.
According to a local newspaper, the Anson Record, Bishop threatened legal action if the video was not promptly produced and then subsequently pursued court avenues to get that footage released. By mid-November, portions of the footage did start and begin circulating publicly, including clips that were aired by local television outlets showing that the campaign affiliated individuals near voters while they were voting.
However, during the county canvas, officials and the county attorney pushed back, arguing that the videos were edited and lacked full context and did not conclusively demonstrate any sort of wrongdoing. Anson County is located about an hour east of Charlotte on Highway 74, right along the South Carolina border.
So it is within the Charlotte, larger Charlotte metro area and Charlotte media market.
Some of the other allegations include current Democrat members of the county board being told that they were not told rather of the petition and only found out about the removal of the deputy director moments before the board voted to do so in closed session. On April 2nd, just back a couple of days ago, the Anson County Democrat Party protested outside the County Board of Elections office, as was reported by WSOC television. Among the most serious allegations leveled by the county board in the petition is that the current election director violated North Carolina General Statute 163-274, which makes it a class two misdemeanor to interfere with the lawful duties of an election board or its members. According to sworn statements submitted by board members, Melton allegedly canceled a duly called and publicly noticed meeting of the Anson County Board of Elections scheduled for Tuesday, September the 9th, 2025, at 5 p.m. and did that without board authorization.
The meeting had been set pursuant to North Carolina general statute, which grants authority to the board chair or a majority of the members, not the staff, to call meetings or adopt a meeting schedule. The board chair alleges that she did not become aware of the cancellation until seeing the public notice over the weekend online and was unable to reach the election director in Melton in time to reissue the meeting notice before the statutory deadline expired. Board members contend that by nullifying a duly called meeting, Meltlin obstructed board oversight, prevented lawful decision-making, and violated both state law and state board policy. There are also some questions being asked about ballot security and the chain of custody as North Carolina law and state election board rules strictly govern the handling of marked ballots, including a continuous chain of custody, sealing, reconciliation, as well as things like secure transport. The state board of election officials manually require sealed ballot containers, document transfer custodies, and full reconciliation.
Deviation from these requirements constitute violations of mandatory election security procedures. And according to public records, Anson County board members Matthew Longworth and Kelly Knapp say that they discovered this during their March 6th, 2026 meeting to examine provisional ballots, that the proper chain of custody procedures, including the critical sealing of Election Day ballots, bags, boxes, and machinery, was not performed properly or recorded for verification purposes. According to North Carolina State Board of Elections guidelines, this constitutes a violation of election security. The Republican-led Anson County Board is also contending that during the November the 7th, 2025 Board of Elections sample. Audit meeting, sealing of sample bags, boxes, and machinery was also not performed properly or recorded for verification purposes.
A source who spoke to the Carolina Journal with given anonymity told the Carolina Journal: Such failures could be used to call an entire county's election results into question, exposing the Anson County Board of Elections to serious legal and financial risks. Inevitably, the Anson County GOP members concluded proper handling, chain of custody and sealing of ballots and devices was not performed at most of the Anson voting locations during the last two elections and possibly for years after.
Some other complaints include, according to a written complaint viewed by Carolina Journal, Anson County voter Donna Burr, who is blind, requested an accessibility voting machine at the Seoul Voting Location in Anson County back on October the 23rd, 2024. According to the interview transcripts of her complaint, Burr says that she was denied one of those machines by Melton herself. She then filed a statement at the time of the incident, and it was signed by Melton along with other witnesses of the statements. Such a denial would be a violation of the federal Help America Vote Act, also known as HAVA, which was signed into law in October of 2002, requiring that by 2006, so now for the last 20 years, all voting locations provide at least one accessible voting machine per polling place. as well as Title II of the American with Disabilities Act, also known as the ADA, requires state and local governments to ensure that people with disabilities have the full and equal opportunity to vote.
Hava enshrined that visually and hearing impaired voters have the right to vote privately and independently, keeping their ballot choices a secret. According to the transcript, Burr stated that she told Melton she wanted to vote privately and independently and was later given the, was told that she did not have the opportunity to do so. There's also some questions about alleged undermining of precinct official appointments. Emails submitted to the North Carolina State Board of Elections also allege a series of irregularities and improper conduct by Melton and other officials within Anson County during the leadup to the 2025 municipal elections. According to the emails, the issue stems from an August 2025 meeting of the Anson County Board where precinct appointments were being finalized.
A statement signed by the board chair alleges that Melton made disparaging remarks about Republican nominees for precinct appointments. Judge positions, including publicly stating that a Republican-nominated chief judge for a Lylesville precinct was, quote, too fat and too unhealthy to serve. The statement further claims that Republican leaders believe that Melton's comments were influenced by personal interests in reinstating a previously Democrat chief judge identified as her sister in Monica Grambling. The county board also alleges that Melton improperly altered precinct assignments after they had been formally approved by the board, despite state law prohibiting such unilateral changes by an election director. There is a lot of meat on this bone as it relates to what is going on in Anson County.
We have got all of the allegations over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, and it is now the North Carolina State Board of Election Director and Sam Hayes who will decide whether the documented allegations merit such remover of Melton, Anson County's election director under North Carolina General Statute 163-35.
Meanwhile, the county's Republican Majority Board of Elections. Is already planning a comprehensive overhaul of Anson's election administration. The outcome could have statewide implications as North Carolina's elections are essentially largely run or almost exclusively run at the county level. This, of course, also backs up some other reporting that we've had over at CarolinaJournal.com in New Hanover County, where similar motions and petitions have been filed against their election director. You can read some more details on this story out of Anson and New Hanover County by visiting our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com.
It's 524. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, more than half of North Carolina's public high school graduates completed at least one college-level course or exam while still in high school last year. This is some great news, according to state election officials who announced this last week. That percentage is the highest ever recorded across the Tar Heel State. The 54% figure draws from the class of 2025 and includes students who passed advanced placement known as AP, Cambridge International, or college and career promise, known as CCP, dual enrollment courses.
The superintendent of public instruction in Mo Green presented the data to the State Board of Education alongside three other records announced in its recent months. An 88% four-year graduation rate, record AP performance, and nearly 383,000 industry-recognized credentials earned by career and technical education, known as CTE students, in a single year. Green told the board, North Carolina, you should take a bow. These are historic results for North Carolina's public schools. Despite the positive trends in numbers, some critics do urge some caution with Bryce Fielder, who is the director of the Carolina Academic Leadership Network.
Work saying, quote, while these achievements show a positive trend, they must be taken in context. Recent changes to the AP exam scoring have fueled a well-documented nationwide spike in passing scores across several subjects. Moreover, graduation rates in themselves are not necessarily an indicator of college and career readiness. Dual enrollment performance is, however, one of the more meaningful measures of future success. CCP or the Career and College Promise Dual Enrollment Program, which allows high school students to enroll simultaneously in college courses at community colleges and four-year institutions, did drive much of that growth in the state with 38% of 2025 graduates, which rounds out to about roughly 87,000 students enrolled in at least one dual enrollment course through the program.
also an all-time high and a ten percent increase over the prior year, according to new data from the state. Green pointed to the state's one hundred and thirty eight cooperative, innovative high schools known as early colleges as particular points of distinction. These schools, in most cases, are located on community college and university campuses and offer what is called a hybrid high school college experience starting in ninth grade with no tuition cost to the families that take advantage. Green said, North Carolina is not just following the national early college movement, we're leading it. North Carolina has more early college schools than any other state in America.
Of the more than 6,500 students who graduated from the CIHS high schools in 24-25, more than half of them earned an associate's degree alongside their high school diploma. These students now enter four-year colleges as juniors, Green said, with an economic head start that is particularly significant for first-generation college students. According to the senior director of the Department of Public Instruction's Office of Advanced Learning and Gifted Education, noted that graduates of the CCP program have improved in terms of earning potential. Students in the college transfer pathways earned 7% higher cumulative wages than their peers, while those in the CTE pathway were more likely to be employed with 14% higher wages on average. That is according to research conducted by the RAND Corporation as well as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The statement there reads, This program is especially powerful for first-generation college students and has the ability to drive economic mobility for families across our state. Mo Green, who is the head of DPI, said that the state is aiming to reach 100% participation in college-level coursework and intends for North Carolina to be the best in the nation by 2030. We have been tracking a lot of education trends over the last couple of years over at our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
So much of the education system turned on its head in the immediate And well, during and the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early parts of 2020, a lot of learning loss taking place across the state, not only of North Carolina, but the entire nation, with many schools shut down for extended periods of time. There have been many questions asked by education experts, lawmakers, and others about how to get that growth back on track. And it would appear here, at least in North Carolina, that those numbers are beginning to come back and normalizing. You can read more on this story by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com. The headline record: 54% of North Carolina public school graduates completed college-level coursework.
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just go to simplepractice.com. Again, that's simplepractice.com. It's 5:36. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig.
A good Wednesday morning to you. A legal battle over election integrity in North Carolina is coming to an end. To walk us through some of those details this morning, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, as always, appreciate your time. Can you walk us through this process as it relates to non-citizen voters?
Sure. This is a lawsuit, Nick, that came about a couple of years ago, and it's been kind of simmering in the background as all of these other more high-profile election cases have moved forward. The Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party filed suit against the state Board of Elections in August 2024, so really in the height of the 2024 election cycle. And what they said was that the Board of Elections was violating a 2023 state law that said that the elections officials should remove voters from the rolls if they had been notified that these same voters had. Indicated on a juror questionnaire that they couldn't participate in a jury because they're non-citizens.
The idea of the law was: well, if you're not doing jury duty because you're a non-citizen, that means you're also a non-citizen in terms of voting and you shouldn't be able to participate in the election.
Now, once this suit came out, the State Board of Elections had a very vehement response saying, No, we are complying with the law. The only reason we're not doing what you Republican Party groups want us to do for this cycle, meaning the 2024 cycle, was because federal law blocked any removal of voters within a certain window before the election.
So, basically, the other development that happened shortly after this suit was filed is that two groups working with Democratic operative Mark Elias's law firm, the groups North Carolina, Asian Americans Together, and El Pueblo, so two different groups of of voters who thought they might be targeted by something like this. They filed to intervene in the case and were allowed to intervene in the fall of 2024. But then you really didn't hear much about this case for well over a year and a half or so. But now, new court filings suggest that the two Republican Party groups and the State Board of Elections have come to an agreement. The interveners, the groups that are working with the Elias law firm, they do not.
Go along with this agreement and are planning to file something explaining why they don't agree. But the plaintiffs and the state board have come to an agreement, are asking a Wake County Superior Court judge to endorse that agreement through something called a consent judgment that would end the lawsuit. And basically, it says that the state board of elections is going to comply with this law when they get information from superior court clerks across the state. If it has any information about people who have said they can't participate in a jury because they're non-citizens, then they would go through and check and see if they are registered voters. And if so, they take them off the voting rolls.
And also, this judgment would say that this information would be a public record and that the state board of elections would keep this information on its website.
So not only election integrity involved, but also transparency.
So that is a major development in a case that's basically just been sitting in the background for almost a couple of years. The only thing that could cause this agreement not to go forward is if the two groups that are working with Mark Elias' law firm, if they come up with some sort of objection that a judge finds legitimate. Barring that, we would see a settlement of this lawsuit, and there would be a publicized process. in which the Superior Court clerks continue to provide information to the Elections Board about anyone who says they can't participate in a jury because they're a non-citizen. And then you would see whether those folks are then stricken from North Carolina's voting rolls.
Mitch, this is not the first legal challenge that we've talked about in recent months in which groups, predominantly those on the political right, in this case, as you mentioned, both the National Republican Party and the state Republican Party suing the state board of elections. All of this, of course, as the state board of elections has had a shift in who is in control, a shift from a 3-2 Democrat majority to now a 3-2 Republican majority. Obviously, these groups are more ideologically aligned now, and seemingly would make sense that they are now settling these suits instead of dragging out years-long legal battles, vehemently disagreeing with the opposite political party. You're absolutely right. This suit was filed in 2024 when the State Board of Elections still had that 3-2 Democratic majority.
And it was seen at the time that perhaps from the vantage point of the Republican Party groups, that a Democratic-dominated elections board was not that interested in complying with the 2023 law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly. And that was one of the reasons why the suit was filed.
Now, the State Board of Elections, as I said, vehemently denied that it was not complying with the law and basically gave Carolina Journal a bunch of information about what had been done, explaining why no one was being stricken from the roles within a certain window before the election because federal law blocked that from happening. But they were calling the accusations from the Republican Party at the time categorically false and were also calling for the Republicans to rescind the press. Press releases they put out about the lawsuit.
So there was a big division at the time about the lawsuit. But shortly after the two groups working with the Elias law firm, North Carolina Asian Americans Together and El Pueblos, shortly after they got involved in the suit, you really didn't hear much about this case for a long time. And it's really only now. Months after the elections board had shifted to become a 3-2 Republican majority, and you saw much more of an emphasis on the board about election integrity. And following some of the same issues that the Republican Party has been following, that you're seeing the resolution of some of these lawsuits.
We've seen others, as you've mentioned, that are dealing with other election integrity issues. This is just one more of those cases that Republicans filed back in 2024 that now seem to be coming to somewhat of a resolution. And it does make some sense logically, Mitch, when this was filed. And I even do remember there being some questions about to rather the RNC and the North Carolina Republican Party as to why this was filed so late into the 2024 cycle, very close to that window of the election. And so the argument there from the state board at the time, at least there's some logic to that.
But let me ask you about these outside groups that you noted working with the Elias law firm. What was their reason for jumping into this suit? Are they concerned about disenfranchisement or something of that nature? Yeah, that was the exact concern, and especially because of the timing of the suits. As you were just talking about, this was filed very close to the general election in 2024.
And I think these groups had the sense that perhaps the Republican Party was trying to disenfranchise voters who are either Asian American or Latino. The El Pueblo group works with Latinos, and they were concerned that perhaps this was some sort of Republican effort to disenfranchise voters who have a right to vote right before a big major election. Remember, this was one of multiple suits. That the Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party filed right there in the heart of the 2024 election cycle. There were others dealing with the overseas voters, also the voters who had the incomplete voter registration.
Some of these issues ended up cropping up again after the election in that big court fight between Jefferson Griffin and Allison Riggs. But this was an issue that didn't end up in the Griffin-Riggs fight, but had cropped up in August 2024. And basically, as all of those other election fights were playing out in the courts, this one kind of sat in the background.
So it was interesting to see that as the litigation has moved forward, there was some discussion between the State Board of Elections and the Republican groups about trying to get this resolved so that the lawsuit would not be continuing to sit on the books. If this consent judgment is fined, is signed. One of the provisions of it is that the lawsuit would be dismissed and that there would be no attempt to get any attorney's fees. The Republican Party would eat its attorneys' fees. The State Board of Elections would also eat its fees.
There probably aren't a ton of fees given the fact that this case hasn't really gone anywhere for much of the past two years, but it would be nice to see some sort of resolution. And we could see a fairly quick resolution unless a judge decides that the objections from the two groups that we were just talking about, North Carolina Asian Americans Together and El Pueblo, if they have objections that raise some legitimate concerns for a judge, then the case could continue. If the judge says, no, this is the type of settlement that we'd like to see where both parties really come to an agreement, no one has to make any major changes. There isn't any major payment that has to be made one way or another. If a judge decides, that this is going to be fair to all sides, then we'll see a resolution.
Well, and obviously, Mitch, based on what these groups argued back in 2024, if it was all just dealing with the close proximity to the major presidential election, you would presume that maybe they won't have any major objections. We'll, of course, not necessarily hold our breath and wait for some of those court filings to come in.
So, Mitch, if this is approved and if this is accepted by the judge, what will this mean for the elections coming up later on this year? If somebody does respond to a jury summons and says, hey, I'm not eligible to serve on this jury, I'm not a U.S. citizen, that means that there will be a process that will play out in which those voters will be stricken from the roles here, voter roles here in North Carolina. There is a process, and the consent judgment spells out the timeline for that process to play out.
Now, as we said, one of the things that happened in 2024 is that the suit was filed because the Republican groups, the Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party, said that the state board of elections wasn't complying with the 2023 state law. And the elections board responded: No, there's a reason we can't strike anyone now, and that's because of a federal law that bans any removal of voters from the rolls within a certain timeframe before the election. I think it's 60 days. And they said, you know, we got this information from the superior court clerks, but now we're within that window.
So we can't do anything about it now. We'll have to wait till after the election. The consent judgment spells out the timeline when all of this happens, and it goes into 2028.
So it basically tells you every time, every year, when. the superior court clerks will submit the information and then when the board of elections can consider that information.
So if anyone has some concerns about how it would affect a particular election, they could look at this schedule and know, oh, this is not something that's going to likely have an impact for a 2026 election or the 2028 election because all of this process will have played out during a certain time period, either ahead of the election or after the election. One of the other interesting factors is you may wonder, well, how many people does this affect? When this suit was originally filed, one of the things that the state board of elections responded in trying to defend itself was that it got information from the superior court clerks. About nine people across North Carolina who had answered the information about the jury questionnaire saying they were non-citizens. And so they couldn't strike them from the rolls at that time, but there were nine people that they were going to take a look at after the election.
You know, that's nine people out of the millions and millions of voters in North Carolina. And so it'll be interesting to see whether there's a certain repeat. of that number or if the number becomes smaller or becomes larger. My guess is we're not talking about thousands or even hundreds of people. We may be talking about handfuls of people each time this process plays out year to year.
We'll obviously keep a close eye as this continues to wrap up, seemingly in its final stages within the judicial system right now. We appreciate the information. This morning, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. It's 5:56. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM.
WBT recapping our big story this morning on the Carolina Journal News Hour. The Anson County Board of Elections is alleging that its election director has been conducting and has had mismanagement for years. They are in the process, as we saw in New Hanover County over the last couple of weeks as well, in filing a formal petition, submitting that to the North Carolina State Board of Elections to remove their county election director in Sherry Melton. There are a wide birth of allegations, including failure to execute lawful board duties, interference with statutory duties of the Anson County Board of Elections, mismanagement and dishonesty affecting election administration, as well as conduct unbecoming of an election official or a county employee. That petition has either been filed or is very close in the The process two being filed with the state board of elections.
That letter will go directly, or that petition I should say, will go directly to the executive director in Sam Hayes, who will be able to make the decision to terminate or not terminate that employee. Same process in New Hanover County. We will be keeping a close eye on those details in both New Hanover and Anson County over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Wednesday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT.
We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9, WBT.
