ELIZABETHTOWN — Incumbent Democratic commissioner Russell Priest remained four votes ahead of Republican challenger Wayne Edge with the final absentee votes counted Friday in a special election for Bladen County and the Ninth Congressional District.
The special election was needed because the state Board of Elections refused to certify the Nov. 6 election results for two county races, as well as the U.S. House race for North Carolina’s District 9. The latter became a national headline maker. Investigations led to criminal charges associated with ballot harvesting.
Bladen County’s Board of Elections met in the late afternoon, having received three absentee ballot envelopes that were postmarked in time to be counted, and to consider four provisional ballots. All were valid and fed into the tabulator. The state Board of Elections made its final post just after 7 p.m.
None of the seven ballots included votes for the District 3 race between Priest and Edge, leaving the final numbers the same as Tuesday with Priest ahead 676-672.
The results remain unofficial until the canvass, which is Friday at 11 a.m. The board meets again at 1:30 p.m. for a recount, as requested by Edge.
The contest for two seats on the county’s Soil & Water Conservation District board went to Earl Storms and Charles Wendell Gillespie. Unofficially, Storms had 1,144 votes and Gillespie 1,096. Tim Gause had 957 and write-ins numbered 55.
The new totals were increases of four for Storms, six for Gillespie and three for Gause.
State Sen. Dan Bishop won the Republican primary for the U.S. House race, advancing to the Sept. 10 general election opposite Democrat Dan McCready of Charlotte, Allen Smith of Charlotte and the Green Party, and Jeff Scott of Charlotte and the Libertarian Party. His final total across a district that stretches from the Charlotte area to Fayetteville and the northern edge of Bladen County included 47.7 percent of the vote, with 14,362 votes to 5,854 for Stony Rushing and 5,155 for Matthew Ridenhour.
The final numbers from Bladen County in the House race were Bishop 474, Rushing 370, Stevie Rivenbark Hull 81, Leigh Brown 65, Ridenhour 29, Kathie C. Day 13, Gary Dunn 7, Fran Shubert 6, Dr. Albert Lee Wiley Jr. 3 and Chris Anglin 2. The only candidate to increase their total Friday was Brown by one.
The decision to hold a special election culminuated three months after Election Day, at an evidentiary hearing centered on absentee ballots in Bladen and Robeson counties. The Rev. Mark Harris — who appeared to defeat McCready by 905 votes — was on the stand in the fourth day telling state board members he too believed a new election was needed.
At the center of the controversy has been Bladenboro’s McCrae Dowless, who has since been charged criminally. Prosecutors believe he ran a ballot harvesting scheme. Rebecca D. Thompson, Matthew Monroe Mathis, Tonia Marie Gordon and Caitlyn Croom are also charged.
There was no implication through the hearing, or any criminal charges since, of any candidates running in the Bladen County races.
Turnout for District 9 — it stretches from an eastern portion of Mecklenburg County to a southern portion of Cumberland County and northern portion of Bladen County, with all of Union, Anson, Richmond, Scotland and Robeson counties included — was 9.7 percent. Bladen County’s turnout, including all three races, was 11.85 percent.