If you were skeptical on Wednesday about how people come to elected office in Robeson County, believing that the process is often manipulated and polluted, you are likely more convinced of that today.
We aren’t ready to march in that parade — not yet, anyway.
First there was the counting of provisional ballots to decide a race between Vanessa Burton, a Democrat, and Jack Moody, a Republican, to see who would take Herbert Richardson’s District Court seat when he retires next month.
Moody was on top, albeit not by a comfortable margin, after Election Day, and also after absentee ballots were counted, when the margin became less comfortable.
What remained were provisionals, ballots cast on Election Day under protest, when a voter’s eligibility is in question. There were about 750 to examine, and somewhere north of 400 were determined to be valid and run through the voting machine.
In a 50-50 election, however, Burton received more than 67 percent of the provisional vote to take a 71-ballot lead, which seemed improbable. But one elections official, as a way of explanation, told us that many of the provisionals came from what he called a “different type” of voter, many of them people who traditionally have voted sporadically or not at all — people who might trend Democrat.
Burton has served this county well as an assistant district attorney, enjoyed the endorsement of District Attorney Johnson Britt, and is an honorable person.
But it is disheartening times three for Moody, who twice has been the Robeson County Bar Association’s pick to be appointed a District Court judge, but has been denied each time because money speaks loudly in Raleigh.
He has asked for a recount, which is now scheduled for Nov 26.
Then there was what happened a few hours later in Fairmont, where Democratic leaders from District 2 gathered to pick a replacement for Berlester Campbell, who won a four-year term on the Robeson County Board of Commissioners on May 8 but died unexpectedly on Sept 28.
We knew when his widow Pauline Campbell stood beside Raymond Cummings, the chairman of the county board, and said she wanted that seat, that the political wheels were already in motion to make that happen. She, we believe, will do as her husband did, and that is to fall neatly in line.
There is nothing wrong with the county board’s leadership pushing a candidate in order to keep control of the board. Trust us, Hubert Sealey, who finished second to Campbell in the primary, was not someone the leadership wanted on that board.
But what concerns is the conflicting information about who could vote and have a voice in that decision. We really didn’t know until it began to unfold on Thursday night, when it was announced there would be 49 votes, and an hour later Pauline Campbell was declared the winner by a vote of 26.5 to 23.5, which adds up to 50.
Terry Evans, a Fairmont commissioner, reached out to us on Friday, saying that some precincts were allowed to vote that had not been organized in time. Those precincts went strong for Campbell and are the reason she is now a commissioner-elect.
We asked a lot of questions, and the answers were always confusing and conflicting, making us wonder if those assigned the task of making the appointment knew the rules well enough to follow them. But as is so often the case with the county commissioners, this selection ended just where we thought it would.
We aren’t making a claim today that there were shenanigans in either instance. We are, however, like a lot of people, scratching our heads and wondering.