A North Carolina election official told The Daily Caller a local Democrat may have voted twice in a rural county.
“We did have an issue at one polling place first thing this morning,” Sampson County, N.C. election board staff director Donna Mashburn said in a phone interview. “From the best I can understand, supposedly they voted absentee and then went to the precinct and also voted.”
Mashburn said she’s unsure whether the potential double-voter was male or female. “I really cannot tell you if it was a man or a woman,” she told TheDC.
That’s because the person suspected of voting twice, “Andrew Gail Holmes,” is a registered black female Democrat in the town of Clinton.
Data for Holmes on the North Carolina State Board of Elections website shows the voter has voted consistently since 1992 and was registered first in 1982.
Holmes was unreachable for comment.
Mashburn said authorities plan to conduct an investigation to figure out exactly what happened.
“My board will make a decision on this once we get everything back in 10 days after the election when we do canvass,” she told TheDC. “We do canvass on the 16th here in North Carolina. We have until the 16th to get everything back in and that’s when this issue will be looked at by my board members and they will make a determination as to, ‘Was it voter fraud?'”
She said it also could be a case where “the person that early voted and the person that voted at the polls were two different people with similar names.”
“Canvass is actually our official totals,” she added. “What everybody gets tonight are unofficial totals.”
Mashburn said Holmes’ in-person ballot was accepted Tuesday and likely will stand. If it is determined that Holmes voted twice, Mashburn said, the early-voting ballot will likely be voided.
“When a person early votes, they sign a statement saying they have early voted,” Mashburn said. “When they vote at a precinct, they also sign a sheet saying they are voting.”
Her election board, she told TheDC, will “get the evidence in and look at it and make a determination as to whether this person is actually the same person and has voted twice. Then they will make a decision. But that decision will not be made until we have time to look at the evidence.”
