Brandon Kingdollar, NC Newsline

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs joined a U.S. Senate “spotlight forum” on voting rights Wednesday to deliver a stark warning to Democratic lawmakers: efforts to throw out ballots and overturn elections are just getting started.

Riggs took part in a two-hour panel convened by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), ranking member on the Rules Committee, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, alongside former Attorney General Eric Holder and other voting rights experts.

She said that through her opponent Judge Jefferson Griffin’s challenge to around 68,000 ballots, “we came perilously close to watching out system of rules-based elections crumble before our eyes.”

“For six months and two days after the election, I fought to make sure every eligible vote was counted,” Riggs said. “What we experienced wasn’t even just about one person’s vote, or 68,000 people’s votes. It was a more fundamental dispute: Do voters, not politicians decide elections?”

At stake, she stressed, is whether someone can cast a ballot and feel confident it will count. “Instead, it will depend on whether partisan politicians have enough money to throw at a race to litigate the outcome after the fact,” Riggs said.

While the North Carolina Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court ruled in Griffin’s favor — ordering all or at least some ballots to be disposed of, respectively — a Trump-appointed federal judge found that doing so would violate the constitutional rights of voters who did everything they were asked to do.

“Today, even after Justice Riggs has taken her seat, the Trump administration has now taken up the cause and sued North Carolina, threatening to disenfranchise around 100,000 previously registered voters,” Padilla said. “That is not democracy, that is sabotage.”

After the Justice Department sued North Carolina in March on some of the same grounds as the Griffin challenge, the state Board of Elections unveiled a plan to collect missing information from more than 100,000 registered voters, pledging that no one will be removed from voter rolls. North Carolina Democrats have said they remain concerned that eligible voters will be disenfranchised by the effort.

Among the voters challenged in 2024, Riggs noted, were those who cast military and overseas ballots and did not include photo identification — which the North Carolina State Board of Elections instructed they did not need to provide. And she pointed out that the Griffin campaign challenged these ballots specifically in heavily Democratic counties.

Janessa Goldbeck, the CEO of Vet Voice Foundation — a nonprofit voting rights group that intervened in the Griffin-Riggs litigation — told lawmakers that many of the military voters they contacted had no idea their ballots were being challenged, months into the election lawsuit.

“We used every tool in our toolbox to find these folks — social media, phone banking, volunteers going through day after day — but we’re a nonprofit, and the nonprofit organizations that do this work have limits in terms of their capacity,” Goldbeck said. “We can’t compete with a disinformation campaign that is backed by state actors or an administration that has ill intent, and that’s why it’s so important to have proactive voter protection laws.”

Durbin said there should be a “sense of outrage” that Republicans would try to throw out ballots from soldiers serving overseas.

“It just strikes me that this is a ripe political issue in terms of military veterans standing up and saying, ‘stop it,’” Durbin said. “If these military [personnel] are willing to go overseas, endure hardship in their lives and this danger in their lives, the last thing we ever ought to do is challenge their right to vote.”

Veterans were also ensnared in the other, larger pool of ballots challenged by Griffin — voters alleged to have not provided a partial Social Security number or driver’s license number when registering. That dispute included the ballot of Riggs’s own father, she said.

“My father served his country in uniform for 30 years and was deployed in war,” Riggs said. “My father registered using his retired military ID, an eligible form of photo identification that does not have a driver’s license number or Social Security number on it. After registering, he also showed a valid picture ID every time he voted.”

“In an attempt to selectively overturn the results of an election that disgruntled partisans and disappointed politicians disagreed with, my father and these voters nearly lost their fundamental right to vote,” she added.

Riggs said that in total, her efforts to defend her election victory in court cost roughly $2 million on top of the $5 million spent during the election itself. As a former election attorney, she said she was “uniquely suited” to fight back against the effort, and warned that other candidates may be unable to do the same or could be deterred from running altogether.

“Is part of the strategy on the other side to make sure that they spend so much money, the average person can’t fight them?” Durbin asked.

“Absolutely,” Riggs said. “We absolutely should understand it as a cynical ploy to tie up resources and time instead of focusing on the very pressing issues before the people of this country and the constitutional work that people in my seat should be doing.”

“You saw firsthand in North Carolina the challenges, the burdens that happen when there’s these kinds of attacks on democracy when your challenger tried and then failed to throw out tens of thousands of votes,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). “Do these challenges make voters, especially those who decide to skip the elections from time to time, feel welcome to continue participating in our democracy?”

“It’s obvious that they don’t,” Riggs said. “When we erect barriers to political participation, we are sending a clear message about whose voice matters, whose say we want heard in the political process.”

Much of Wednesday’s discussion also centered on Texas Republicans’ efforts to redraw the state’s congressional map to eliminate five Democratic members of Congress — which has provoked retaliatory initiatives from the Democratic leaders of New York, California, and Illinois. North Carolina came under fire for its own 2023 congressional redistricting, which eliminated three Democratic lawmakers and drew a slew of gerrymandering lawsuits.

“In response to a fair 7-7 congressional map in battleground North Carolina, Republicans stole three congressional districts with a judicially sanctioned, egregious gerrymander,” said Holder, the former attorney general. “In my view, partisan or ideological state Supreme Court justices in that state cast aside their own very recent precedent to make possible a gerrymandered 10-4 congressional delegation. Politicians were, in essence, allowed to choose their voters.”

That state Supreme Court decision played a large role in the stakes of the Riggs-Griffin race. Democrats have said they must win a majority on the state Supreme Court by 2030, the next redistricting year, to again strike down gerrymandering in North Carolina. That means winning four out of five judicial races from 2024 to 2028, including Riggs’. After her Democratic colleague Anita Earls’ 2026 race, the next three seats in contention are all Republican-held.

“A state like North Carolina, which is likely to have the most competitive U.S. Senate race, where my colleague, Justice Anita Earls, is in a tough fight to keep her seat — we can do this,” Riggs said at the panel. “I want folks to understand that folks only try and silence voices and votes that they’re scared of.”

Toward the end of the panel, Riggs highlighted what she saw as cause for optimism — the fact that during her team’s efforts to cure military and overseas ballots that the state courts had ruled should be thrown out, they were able to reach a military member stationed as far away as Antarctica.

“North Carolinians can reach as far as the South Pole to make sure that each other’s voices are heard,” Riggs said. “We will find that silver lining, keep fighting, and even though we know we these will keep coming until policymakers push us in a different direction, we’re up to that fight.”

by Brandon Kingdollar, NC Newsline

February 7, 2025

Just hours after a hearing on Judge Jefferson Griffin’s challenge to more than 65,000 ballots in the state Supreme Court election, a state judge upheld the state election board’s rejection of those claims in a late Friday ruling.

Judge William Pittman ruled in favor of the North Carolina State Board of Elections on its rejection of challenges to voters of three separate categories — military and overseas voters who did not include photo IDs with their mailed ballots, early and absentee voters who Griffin alleged had incomplete voter registrations, and a group Griffin called “Never Residents” consisting of the children of North Carolina citizens living abroad.

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“The Court concludes as a matter of law that the Board’s decision was not in violation of constitutional provisions, was not in excess of statutory authority or jurisdiction of the agency, was made upon lawful procedure, and was not affected by other error of law,” Pittman wrote in an order issued Friday afternoon.

Both Griffin and incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, his opponent in the contested election, attended the hearing before the Wake County Superior Court in person Friday morning. Pittman presided over the hearing, which included attorneys for Griffin and the Board of Elections, as well as those representing Riggs and impacted North Carolina voters and nonprofits.

“The court, having reviewed more than 5,000 pages in the record and all of the briefs — have some other information acquired today that I’ll have to review, so I’m going to take it under advisement,” Pittman said at the hearing’s conclusion. “I can promise you I will do it as fast as I can.”

Pittman’s determination only concerns matters of state law — a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the case will remain in state court, but reserved jurisdiction over potential federal civil rights issues for the federal courts.

“Today’s decisions denying Judge Griffin’s challenges of more than 65,000 ballots are a victory for North Carolina voters and the rule of law,” said Justice Riggs in a statement. “Voters decide elections, and I remain committed to seeing this fight through and upholding North Carolinians’ constitutional freedoms.”

Last month, the state Supreme Court returned the case to the Wake Superior Court for a hearing on whether the Board of Elections erred in rejecting Griffin’s petitions to discard military and overseas ballots he says improperly failed to include photo ID, as well as more than 60,000 early and absentee ballots from voters whose registration forms, he said, failed to include necessary information.

Attorneys for Griffin and the Board of Elections sparred for more than two hours Friday over Griffin’s challenge — and specifically, whether it constituted an attempt to change the election rules after the fact, or to enforce them as they were already written, as well as the question of whether challenged voters received adequate notice.

The Griffin argument

Craig Schauer, an attorney for Griffin, defended his client’s decision to challenge only early and absentee ballots from voters whose registration forms he said did not include a driver’s license number or a partial Social Security Number, while refraining from challenging in-person Election Day votes.

“The state board doesn’t identify who votes on Election Day until after the protest deadline; therefore, you cannot identify who voted on Election Day and include them in an election protest,” Schauer said. “Second, those people who vote on Election Day — my understanding is, those ballots aren’t retrievable.”

He added that it’s irrelevant that errors in the database indicated that some individuals’ registrations lacked driver’s license numbers or a partial Social Security Number — instead, Schauer said, “this exception simply prove the rule” by allowing some voters who have followed the legal requirements to provide this information and vote.

“The fact that there is an exception that allows you to vote if you provided this information and there’s a mismatch simply proves that you must provide the information in the first place,” Schauer said. “This is not a waiver of the obligation to provide the information in the first place.”

He added that he did not see it as a violation of voters’ equal protection rights to specifically dispose of military and overseas ballots that did not include photo ID’s, but only from a set of heavily Democratic counties. He analogized it to someone challenging the ballot of a neighbor who they know is a felon, but failing to challenge the ballots of felons in other counties.

“The reality is, they’re in different situations. The individual in Wake County had their vote challenged, the individual in the other counties didn’t have their vote challenged,” Schauer said.

“Retroactive disenfranchisement”

Ray Bennett, an attorney for Riggs, condemned Griffin’s challenge as an attempt at “retroactive disenfranchisement,” which he called “anti-democratic” and a violation of state law.

“To listen to my friends on the other side, you would think that this is an anodyne, routine election protest process and that this sort of thing happens all the time,” Bennett said. “The reality is that this is unprecedented. The arguments have been tried in some other states, but they’ve not succeeded.”

He accused Griffin of “cutting corners” in providing notice to voters whose ballots were being challenged, arguing that he was required to serve all parties with proper legal notice. Instead, Bennett said, Griffin and the state Republican Party sent out a “postcard” addressed to the voter “or current resident” in a manner identical to election campaign bulk mail.

Bennett said that the notice was also deficient in that it provided only a QR code to view the election protests, which took voters to a set of 300 links for each individual challenge filed by Griffin that “often included attachments with dozens or hundreds of names attached that were not sorted in alphabetical order.” Some of the challenged voters, he said, did not own cell phones or if they did, do not know how to use QR codes.

Bennett argued that Griffin’s challenge amounted to an attempt to “change the rules after the game has been played” — and that the challenges to election rules Griffin’s case relies on either had been attempted before the election and failed, or were not brought despite ample opportunity to do so.

In his view, the arguments brought by Griffin for requiring photo ID’s with military and overseas ballots are made on policy grounds, not statutory ones — he noted that the North Carolina Constitution only requires photo ID for in-person voting, and it was an act of the General Assembly that expanded this to absentee ballots. He said Griffin’s attorneys incorrectly combine two separate articles of statutory law, which do not explicitly require photo ID for military voters.

“…Trying to impose a requirement where there is none under state law”

Terence Steed, an attorney for the Board of Elections, concurred with Bennett that the postcards did not amount to “real, effective notice” — which he said requires the materials in question, not just “a link to thousands of pages of spreadsheets.”

He said that even if voters registrations lacked the information Griffin charges, that does not render them ineligible to vote — the law in question does not create new requirements or qualifications to vote, and instead, was aimed at standardizing voting practices across a single database. He added that regardless, Griffin had not actually identified any voters who did not provide the information, only those where the information could not be found in the digital database.

“These are voters from all walks of life who from everything we can tell, did everything they were told to do when registering, but for many innocuous reasons may not have a driver’s license or Social Security Number in their registration records,” Steed said.

“Petitioner is trying to impose a requirement where there is none under state law,” Steed said. “He has failed to identify a single voter that has actually registered without this information, he has only identified voters who potentially don’t have this data field, filled out in their registration records.”

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs condemned her opponent’s continued efforts to invalidate more than 65,000 ballots in the 2024 election. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)

“I am committed to upholding the rule of law…”

Riggs spoke to observers outside the courthouse after the hearing concluded, and was followed by voters who spoke about their experiences of having ballots challenged. Some said they never received a postcard at all, while others were unable to find their names using it even though they were in fact listed. One voter reported requesting the purportedly “incomplete registration” documents only to find that it included all the requisite information Griffin specified.

“No matter how long this takes, I am committed to upholding the rule of law, standing up for the voters who elected me to keep my seat, standing up for the 65,000 voters whose constitutional rights would be infringed by the relief sought in this case, and ensure that we have accountability for any elected official who would disregard the solemn oath that we all take to uphold, maintain, and defend the state and federal constitutions,” Riggs said.

Hilary Klein, an attorney representing some of the voters whose ballots have been challenged, had said right after the hearing that she expected a ruling from Pittman to be issued sometime in the coming weeks — though the turnaround was ultimately far shorter. She said there would likely be appeals regardless of the hearing’s outcome — a development that could ultimately bring the case back up to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

After that, parties in the case could seek to stay the high court’s ruling and be heard on the federal civil rights issues implicated in the case through the federal courts — portending the possibility of a lengthy legal saga to come.

An overflow crowd

The Wake County courtroom where the case was heard was full to capacity following calls by voting rights organizations to pack the hearing — more than 100 tried to get in, with many observers turned away and left to wait outside.

Daikwon Redfearn, a recent NC Central University graduate, waited outside the courthouse as the hearing was underway. Redfearn said he worked to have young voters turnout at the polls last year, and he wanted to represent those voters whose ballots are being challenged.

“I’m here to let people know your vote counts and you need to fight for your vote,” he said. “If I need to be one man fighting for 60,000 people, I will.”

“This is the case that Trump would have brought if he hadn’t quite won in North Carolina and that is a national story,” said Ann Webb, policy director at Common Cause North Carolina. “This is important for all of us to be following, and it has implications not only for North Carolina — all of North Carolina’s voters — but voters all across the country.”

Lynn Bonner contributed to this report.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump falsely accused his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris of abandoning North Carolina residents impacted by Hurricane Helene in a Greenville rally Monday afternoon — one of many distortions he made after his first visit to the western part of the state post-Helene.

“When the people of North Carolina were stranded and drowning in Hurricane Helene, Kamala Harris was at a glitzy fundraiser in a city that she destroyed, San Francisco,” Trump said. “When North Carolina needed help, Kamala Harris was nowhere to be found.”

While Harris did attend a fundraiser at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in the days after Helene struck North Carolina, she also made multiple visits to the disaster zone in the week that followed — at one point helping pack aid kits at a distribution center in western North Carolina, the Associated Press reported.

Trump did not visit western North Carolina until Monday, when he spoke with affected residents in Asheville, though he visited other areas impacted by the storm in Georgia. He acknowledged this during his speech Monday, telling the crowd he did not want to disrupt recovery efforts — though he took credit for convincing Elon Musk to provide Starlink satellite communication devices to North Carolinians and Georgians hit by the storm.

Trump’s rally brought thousands of supporters to Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum, a venue at East Carolina University. Harris delivered remarks to a packed crowd at the same arena last week, goading Trump as “weak and unstable” and accusing him of dodging interviews. The former president spoke shortly after 3 p.m. Monday for a little over an hour — avoiding the long spells of silence that sparked questions about his health at other recent speeches.

False immigration claims

A persistent theme throughout the evening was immigration, with Trump repeating false claims that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado — and alleging that they had done the same in New York’s Times Square, citing break-in reports by the New York Post.

He reiterated the false claim that FEMA spent aid money for disaster relief on undocumented immigrants, a claim the agency itself has refuted. “When I’m president, North Carolina will get the support you need and deserve, and that is without question.”

Among the migrant groups Trump targeted in his speech were Congolese immigrants, who he called “so much more vicious” than Americans in a xenophobic aside. “They cut you up and they don’t even think about it the next day,” he said.

Trump repeatedly claimed, falsely, that Harris had never called or met with anyone with the U.S. Border Patrol while he touted the endorsement of the law enforcement agency’s labor union. He also lied that she had never visited the U.S.-Mexico border — when in fact, she visited the U.S. border in Arizona last month and spoke with local border patrol leaders there, according to the Associated Press.

He blasted Harris for remarks she made as a presidential candidate during the 2020 Democratic primaries when she stated she would provide gender-affirming surgery to undocumented immigrants in detention facilities — an attack line his campaign has made a focus in the closing weeks of the election. The New York Times reported last week that Trump’s administration also provided gender-affirming surgery to inmates.

Trump denied playing a role in the failure of a border security bill authored by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona, James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, and Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, despite contemporaneous social media posts denouncing the bill.

“Ted, did I ever tell you not to sign that bill? No, right?” he asked Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., who gave remarks earlier in the afternoon. “Maybe I should go along with that story, Ted. Nobody’s had that kind of power in a long time.”

Budd made many similar comments on Harris’s immigration record, calling her a “failed border czar” and blaming her for a spike in border crossings under President Joe Biden — repeating a Republican attack line based on Harris’s role in an effort during early days of the administration to address the root causes of migration in Latin America.

Economic promises

Most of the rest of Trump’s speech centered on economic issues — denouncing Harris and the Biden administration for inflation while pledging to restore the economy to its status under his presidency.

“I’d like to begin by asking a question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Trump said at the beginning of his remarks, echoing Ronald Reagan’s 1980 appeal to voters — though with an ironic twist, as the nation was still at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020.

He repeated pledges to implement a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports — calling anyone who opposed the measure “dumb” or “corrupt” — and said he would also make interests on car loans fully tax-deductible, an innovation he compared to the invention of the paper clip. “People look at it, they say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”

Trump decried the loss of manufacturing jobs in North Carolina, making special mention of the state’s furniture manufacturing industry — which declined precipitously in the 2000s.

“I used to come down here all the time to buy furniture for hotels and things that I was building,” Trump said. “Year by year by year it was being dissipated, it was being taken over by China and others, and all we needed to do is slap some tariffs on it.”

He vowed to bring manufacturing jobs back to North Carolina — an echo of his promises during the 2016 election — and bring an end to inflation.

“I’m here today with a message of hope for all Americans,” Trump said. “With your vote in this election, I will end inflation, I will stop the invasion, and I will bring back the American dream.”

Among the speakers before Trump was retired Army Col. Laurie Buckhout, the Republican challenging Rep. Don Davis in North Carolina’s closest congressional race, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report — the state’s first congressional district, which includes Greenville. Trump reminded rally-goers he endorsed her during his remarks.

“I want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump as he fights to make America great again,” Buckhout told the crowd to cheers. “The working families and family farmers of eastern North Carolina cannot afford four more years of Kamala Harris’s record-setting inflation.”

Early voting

Monday’s event came just days after the start of early voting Thursday, which officials said began at a record pace. More than one million ballots had been cast statewide as of Sunday, the vast majority of which came at in-person early polling stations.

Trump commended western North Carolina voters for making it to the polls and in a shift from the 2020 presidential race, urged his supporters to bank their ballots ahead of election day, reminding them that they have until Nov. 2 to head to the polls for early voting.

“These are people that lost their houses, in some cases unfortunately they lost family members, and yet they set a record in early voting,” Trump said. “And that is Trump territory too, so that should be a good thing.”

Republican attorney general candidate Rep. Dan Bishop, speaking earlier in the afternoon, said he was pleased the number of Republican early voters was roughly keeping pace with the Democratic total. Alluding to election fraud claims, he called on rally attendees to build a lead that is “too big to rig.”

Trump made similar references during his speech, though stopped short of repeating his false claim that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.

“Did you ever hear the expression that the vote counter is far more important than the candidate?” he asked rally-goers. “We can’t let that happen. We’ve got to take it back.”

The morning before the rally, Trump reiterated his “complete and total endorsement” of several North Carolina Republican congressional candidates on Truth Social, including Reps. Chuck Edwards, David Rouzer, and Greg Murphy. All three races are considered safe Republican seats by the Cook Political Report.

Trump will visit Greensboro on Tuesday to conclude his circuit around the state, delivering a speech at the city’s Greensboro Coliseum at 3 p.m.

This story was originally produced by NC Newsline which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network, including the Daily Montanan, supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on Facebook and X.

North Carolina set a new all-time record for early voting with a surge of more than 350,000 voters on the first day of open polls.

The State Board of Elections reported 353,166 voters Thursday, narrowly beating out the 2020 record of 348,559 ballots — a staggering shift in enthusiasm from the start of the campaign, when voters seemed to largely dread an expected rematch between a pair of familiar presidential candidates.

That dynamic turned on its head in July with the exit of President Joe Biden from the race and the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, who ignited enthusiasm in Democrats and trepidation in Republicans — enough to help drive a historic start to the 2024 race in the Tar Heel state.

“Haven’t stood in a line like this to vote since Obama 2008,” blogger Tom Sullivan posted on X, photographing dozens lined up out the doors of one Asheville polling place.

Asheville, North Carolina. Haven’t stood in a line like this to vote since Obama 2008. pic.twitter.com/JwxNfTlzNs
— @TomSullivan@mstdn.social (@BloggersRUs) October 17, 2024

The result is even more noteworthy in consideration of the devastation to western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene, which observers widely predicted would present major disruptions to the election. According to the State Board of Elections, voters reported “no significant issues or problems” on Thursday.

“Yesterday’s turnout is a clear sign that voters are energized about this election, that they trust the elections process, and that a hurricane will not stop North Carolinians from exercising their right to vote,” said election board executive director Karen Brinson Bell.

Among Thursday’s early voters was Democratic candidate for governor Attorney General Josh Stein, who met a crowd of supporters in southeast Raleigh to cast his ballot, encouraging all North Carolinians to take advantage of the state’s 17 days of early voting.

In its initial relief bill, the state allocated $5 million to the election board to help alleviate issues in the western part of the state, permitting changes to early voting in polling places in 25 affected counties. Lawmakers rejected a separate proposal to postpone registration and mail-in ballot return deadlines in those counties.

Another 75,133 voters have already turned in absentee ballots, the state board said — a marked downturn from 2020, when 553,000 mail-in ballots had been received, in large part due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the election process. That year, 18% of all voters cast their ballots through the mail. Officials expect that rate to decrease in 2024 in the absence of pandemic safety measures.

Voters can find a list of polling sites on the board of elections website alongside other instructions on how to vote early. Those who have not yet registered can still register in-person at any polling place until the conclusion of early voting at 3 p.m. on Nov. 2. North Carolina state law requires voters to present a photo ID when casting their ballots.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com. Follow NC Newsline on Facebook and X.