Claim by controversial NC sheriff that his name was left off the ballot is refuted by board of elections
Terry Johnson, a popular yet controversial sheriff running for reelection in Alamance County, NC, has been pushing claims that his name was left off the ballot during early voting for the past five days, ignoring a press release put out by the county board of elections confirming that “the names of all eligible candidates are included on all ballots.”
The Alamance County Board of Elections met on Monday night to address the matter, which arose when two voters left an early-voting site last Thursday and reported to a poll greeter for the Johnson campaign that the sheriff’s name was not on their ballots. The two voters went back inside the early voting location, and were able to fill out provisional ballots.
With four members present — two Republicans and two Democrats — the board examined the ballots on Monday night and confirmed that Johnson’s name was listed. Noah Reed, a Democrat chairing the meeting, also disclosed the two voters’ selections.
“I read Terry Johnson on both ballots,” he said. After exchanging glances with his fellow board members and Elections Director Dawn Hurdle, Reed recognized his error in violating the two voters’ confidentiality.
“I messed up,” he said, laughing. “Forgive me.”
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Despite the board of elections running down the original claim and confirming that the two voters had the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, the Johnson campaign appears unlikely to let the issue go.
In a Facebook post published on Monday afternoon and subsequently taken down, the Johnson campaign claimed to have received reports from 27 other voters who reported similar experiences, while also raising questions about other candidates’ names being left off the ballot, without presenting any evidence.
“It does not seem that our concerns can be alleviated by the examination of the two ballots first in question,” the campaign wrote prior to the board of elections meeting on Monday. “Hopefully, the first two men who reported the sheriff’s name not being on the ballot were simply mistaken but what about all the others and what about the other race that is being questioned? From our perspective, this changes nothing — we do not know if there have been instances involving another race.”
Kathy Gilgo-Hartkopf Page, who identified herself as a “volunteer” for the Johnson campaign while stipulating that she does not speak for the sheriff, made similar statements to the board during the public comment section of the meeting, saying, “We’re concerned because we have just heard from so many people that — and about so many people — with the same report. Not just these two individuals. We’ve also heard from a number of people about inconsistencies in another race that is on these ballots. That’s a concern as well.”
Hurdle reported to the board members on Monday night that election staff checked the voting equipment at the early-voting sites, including test scripts and printouts, and confirmed that the equipment was working correctly after receiving a complaint from Page on Nov. 4. Hurdle reiterated to Raw Story this morning: “The sheriff was on their ballot.”
Hurdle told Raw Story that aside from the two men whose votes for Johnson were confirmed by the board on Monday night, all but one of the reports of the sheriff’s name being left off the ballot have come from Page. The only time election staff has heard directly from a voter making the assertion, Hurdle said, was when a man called the elections office on Monday, but declined to give his name.
“We are making incident reports,” Hurdle said. “There’s not a lot to report. She’s calling and giving reports that she’s got voters. She doesn’t give me names.”
In an earlier interview, Hurdle told Raw Story that Johnson and his supporters “are putting out misinformation.” She added, “All of our machines are tested. We test the scripts.”
On the morning after Page provided the initial report about the two voters who couldn’t find Johnson’s name on the ballot the board of elections issued a press release confirming that “elections staff verified that all candidates that are supposed to be on the ballots are correctly listed.” But a poll greeter for the Johnson campaign continued to tell voters that Johnson’s name wasn’t appearing on the ballot, according to Anthony Pierce, a Democratic candidate for Alamance County Board of Commissioners, who was outside a polling location on Nov. 5, the final day of early voting.
The Johnson campaign, which has not responded to messages from Raw Story, has shown no signs of backing down.
“After numerous voters expressed concern that Terry Johnson’s name did not appear on their ballots, the Johnson for Sheriff campaign poll greeters began asking voters to be vigilant to assure that our sheriff’s name appeared on both the screen and also on their printed ballot if they believed they had voted for the sheriff.”
The Johnson’s campaign’s Nov. 4 Facebook post conveying reports that the sheriff’s name was left off the ballot was temporarily taken down, and the campaign received a report stating, “Your post goes against our Community Standards on voting suppression,” the campaign reported in a subsequent Facebook post on Monday. The Facebook post published on Monday was also subsequently taken down, for reasons that remain unexplained.
In that post, the campaign wrote: “It was confirmed by the Alamance County Board of Elections Director that the NC State Board of Elections asked a federal agency to have our original Facebook post about all of this to be investigated to see if it qualified for removal.”
Hurdle clarified to Raw Story that the State Board of Elections contacted Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and requested an investigation of the post.
Ernest Lewis Jr., an Alamance County Democratic party official, reported to the local board of elections on Monday that he reported the allegations that the sheriff’s name was not appearing on the ballots to the State Board of Elections on Nov. 5.
Johnson, a Republican, has served as sheriff of Alamance County since 2002, and is running for his sixth term. He has run unopposed in his past three elections. Celebrated by his white conservative base but reviled by others, Johnson has become a lightning rod for racial polarization in the county, which is situated on Interstate 85 between Durham and Greensboro.
An investigation by the US Justice Department in 2012 found that Alamance County Sheriffs’ deputies under Johnson’s command targeted Latino drivers for traffic stops and that the agency leadership “foster a culture of bias by using anti-Latino epithets.” The Justice Department took the sheriff’s office to court, and in 2014 a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush dismissed the complaint.
More recently, the sheriff’s office has become the focal point of protests over a contract with ICE to house immigration detainees in the county jail and protests against a Confederate monument outside the Old County Courthouse that led to dozens of arrests in 2020.
In this election, Johnson faces a challenge from Democrat Kelly White.
The Justice Department announced plans on Monday to deploy poll monitors to Alamance County on Election Day, along with four other counties in North Carolina. The observers are part of the department’s civil rights division, which “enforces the federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all citizens to access the ballot.”
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