5. The State Board of Elections at the present does not exist because the terms of office for that Board have expires and Governor Roy Cooper has failed to appoint the New State Board members. Therefore, the State Board of Elections staff are operating without Board leadership. The State Board of Elections staff, by themselves, decided that they will not “officially” allow the Cleveland County Board of Elections to change their filing dates to dates different from all the other 99 counties. The State BOE lawyers decided they worked for the State BOE and not an aberrant county like Cleveland County in their local school board elections. So, the petition filers for the Cleveland County School Board were stuck with the June 30, 2017 date that Kathy Falls is squalling and bawling so much about.
6. The Cleveland County Board of Elections hired their own Election Law specialist Attorney, Brian King, to set this situation right and allow petition filers, such as Kathy Falls, to have sufficient time to file her petition, The petition filing date deadline for the school board elections in Cleveland County has now been determined to be September 22, 2017. The State BOE staff have decided to allow (by not disallowing) this September 22, 2017 petition filing date for only Cleveland County for only the 2017 election cycle. This means that any Unaffiliated registered voter, like Kathy Falls, and any other voter in Cleveland County who wants to file as a candidate, under the petition process, for the school board can file their petition with at least 2,535 duly registered Cleveland County voter signatures and have their name placed directly on the 2017 General Election Ballot.
7. A draft Bill is being or has been drawn up by Cleveland County representatives to the General Assembly to further accommodate petition filing candidates to allow the number of duly registered petition signers to be reduced from 2,535 voters to 500 for only the 2017 General Election. This draft bill can only be submitted to the General Assembly on August 3, 2017 or later when the General Assembly goes back into session. Since this draft bill only applies to Cleveland County, 1 of 100 counties, who has worked their way into being different from everybody else, it is not certain this bill will pass. I am expecting the draft bill to pass because the other 99 county representatives could care less about what we do here in Cleveland County.
