From the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law:
On Tuesday, the State Board of Elections unanimously agreed with the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law and its client, District Court Judge Marvin Pope, voting to hold two separate elections for the two vacant superior court judge seats in Buncombe county.
Earlier this year, the judicial election process was thrown into uncertainty when one of the candidates for superior court judge, Ms. Kate Dreher, asked the Board to nullify a previously held primary election for one of the superior court judge seats. ?Ms. Dreher and SBE legal staff had sought to combine the seats so that both judicial vacancies would be filled using the newly implemented Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) procedure.
Instant Runoff Voting differs from traditional election methods by requiring voters to cast not one vote, but three votes, and to rank order each of the three votes for up to three candidates. ?If no candidate wins an outright majority of first place votes, the IRV method implements a complicated mathematical formula to determine the ultimate winner.
NCICL argued that the laws do not permit the use of IRV voting to fill vacancies that occurred prior to the regular primary election process and that two separate elections were required.
The Institute cautioned that nullifying the results of an already concluded primary election and changing the election rules mid-race not only violated state election laws but threatened the candidates? constitutional rights.
The Board voted unanimously to hold two separate elections for the vacated seats and to use IRV for only the seat vacated after the primary election.
Judge Marvin Pope, will now compete in a special election in November for one of those vacancies.
