This article by Kate Croxton was published December 23, 2017 by The Times News.

Alamance NAACP President Barrett Brown wants to see a change in felons being charged with voter fraud.

Of the nearly 4.8 million ballots cast during the general election from North Carolina, 441, roughly 0.01 percent, were felon voters who were ineligible. Of those, 13 were from Alamance County, and 12 are being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office.

After reading about Anthony Haith, one of the 13 who was charged Monday, Dec. 11, and 11 others who are being arrested and charged, Brown expressed concerns over felons being tracked down.

“It seems to me a political move to go after people who thought they could vote,” Brown said. “I understand that it is illegal for felons to vote, but it is not like these people presented fraudulent information. It is not like they voted with a wrong ID. They didn’t try to vote twice. They weren’t trying to undermine our democracy. They had registered to vote. They had registration cards. They were on the roll. The judges at the precinct let them vote.”

Along with Haith, six others so far have been charged: Milton Lee Wilson, Neko Chantell Rogers, Steven Lee White, Whitney Cherrell Brown, Ebonie Octavia Oliver and Keith Sharrell Sellars. The other five—-Michael Wayne Spinks, Robert Chase Wade, Taranta Lamar Holman, Willie Cornelis Vinson Jr. and Jason Charles—-are still being tracked down.

“There are outstanding warrants for their arrests,” District Attorney Patrick Nadolski said. “When they are either found or come up in the system, they will be charged.”

According to the State Board, it is Class I felony “for any person convicted of a crime which excludes the person from the right of suffrage, to vote … without having been restored to the right of citizenship.” Each prosecuted felon could be looking at as long as two years in prison, loss of probation or parole, fines and other penalties.

Haith bonded out with a $1,000 bond. Nadolski did not know the status of the others.

Discouraged from voting

Brown said that after the felons were charged, people have told him they will not risk being arrested by voting.

“A broader problem is that it discourages people who could vote from even risking it because, if you have a felony and … you aren’t sure of all the rules and regulations, you won’t even try,” Brown said. “One of the first things one of the people told me is, ‘I will never try and vote again.’”

Brown described charging felons who voted as “more clerical… than criminal.”

“It seems unfair that the Board of Elections and the people who are supposed to do whatever vetting they did to find out these people had voted when they shouldn’t have, … they should have done that on the front end,” Brown said. “These are people who, if they had showed up and had not been on the rolls, they wouldn’t have voted. They would have gone home. It seems duplicitous to have people on the rolls who are not eligible to vote, and then try to put people in jail for it when really the fault is people, the Board of Elections, for not vetting their own rolls.

“These 12 people are not felons,” Brown added. “They are people who have felonies who are trying to get their lives together, and throwing this kind of curve at them seems unfair.”

Prosecutions

The board goes through a simple process to track down felon voters, along with double voters, noncitizen voters and voter impersonations. The Board uses a team of investigators for each individual’s case to determine their names and which counties they reside in. They then send the list to the district attorneys in each county. From there, it is up to each district attorney whether to prosecute.

For Alamance County, Nadolski decided to prosecute with the local authorities responsible for tracking down the felons.

“In this case, the State Board of Elections provided us with investigations that they conducted,” Nadolski said. “I think it is important that we work to preserve the sanctity of the election system. At the bare minimum, that requires each citizen to act in accordance with the law.”

Of the 100 counties in North Carolina, 96, including Alamance, had at least one case of felons voting during the general election. Cumberland, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford and Wake counties saw upwards of 20 cases of felons voting. Alleghany, Henderson, Richmond and Wilkes counties had no felon voters. Among the 96 with felon voters, not all are prosecuting. Guilford, Chatham and Orange aren’t, said Patrick Gannon, the board’s public information officer.

“We do not immediately have a comprehensive breakdown of which cases have been referred and which have resulted in prosecutions/arrests,” Gannon wrote. “Some cases are still being investigated by the State Board office, and others are awaiting decisions by district attorneys.”

‘Akin to Jim Crow’

Brown, who knew some of the 12 felons being tracked down in Alamance County, is proposing a change in how felons who vote are held responsible after he compared the felony charge to Jim Crow laws, which were used to enforce racial segregation.

“There are lots of laws that over the years have been repealed and replaced, but to me… the strictness of the law is akin to a Jim Crow law,” Brown said. “It so severely punishes people. I mean, if anything, it should be a misdemeanor. I am not suggesting that people should not be held accountable, and if you can’t vote, you shouldn’t vote.”

The change includes telling felons at the polls that they can’t vote instead of waiting until afterwards, when the damage is done.

“Whatever due diligence they did after the fact to find these people and conduct this investigation, then they should have done that on the front end to make sure that the voting polls are secure in the first place,” Brown said. “That is what I think. I do know that when they showed up to vote, somebody let them vote. If they couldn’t vote, that should have been done on the front end. Why do we fill out these registration forms if they are not going to vet them?”

One argument that has come up, especially with Haith, was that some felons did not know that they could not vote during the general election or any election. Haith claimed that his parole officer never told him he couldn’t vote. However, under state law, felon voting is a strict liability offense, and a felon may be convicted of a crime even if he or she does not know that voting while serving an active sentence is wrongful.

“We believe that is the case in many of the felon voting cases,” Gannon said. “As such, the State Board office has reached out to the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Department of Public Safety and the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys to develop a program whereby convicted felons are notified of their loss of voting rights as they move through the criminal justice system.”

The initiative is ongoing, according to Gannon, but it would be a good first step moving forward. Another step the board has taken to reduce felons from voting is that they have added checkboxes to certain voter forms to ensure that the participants are aware of voter qualifications, which would include restrictions on current felons from voting.

One slight to the notion that felons didn’t know they could vote, though, is that felons have to sign an oath explaining that their right to vote cannot be restored until they have completed all aspects of their sentences, which includes any probation or parole, Nadolski said.

“There are requirements that they have to sign that they know and understand under oath what they are doing and what the requirements are,” Nadolski said.

Justice or politics?

The Alamance NAACP is investigating what kind of legal help they can offer the felons.

“The people I know are people who are trying to get their lives back on track,” Brown said. “We are investigating how we can help them. We don’t give legal advice but we can sometimes help find people lawyers who can take cases.”

Brown expressed his belief that Nadolski “went out of his way” to prosecute felon voters.

“It seems political,” Brown said, “to prosecute people for trying to vote. If you are a felon, you can’t vote. I get that. These people, by all accounts, didn’t know they couldn’t vote. To hold them responsible without holding the Board of Elections responsible—-I don’t know that anyone should be punished, but I know that their names were on the rolls, they were allowed to vote, and then to turn around and try to prosecute people for doing something that the judges at the precincts let them do, the Board of Elections let them do it. If you fill out a voter registration form and you get a card, why wouldn’t you think you could vote? It seems unnecessary, especially with all the crime that is going on, that this is what the District Attorney’s Office decides to spend their time doing.

“I understand that his job is to keep us safe and put people who are a threat to society away,” Brown continued. “These people are not a threat to society. They, by the information I have, did not know they couldn’t vote. Whether that was the probation officer’s fault, whether it was their vote, whether it was the Board of Elections, somebody let them vote, so why are they the only ones being prosecuted? Why is there a system where these people are being punished, but the people who allowed them to vote are not?”

Nadolski rebuffed these claims and explained that the District Attorney’s Office is trying to “preserve the sanctity of the election system.”

“At the bare minimum, that requires each citizen to act in accordance with the law,” Nadolski said. “When the Elections Board brings us those cases, we have to review them. We had to review them anyway, and then we reached our decisions. This is a situation where the Board of Elections brought these cases to us. I think it is our duty to review them, and … it is important that we work to preserve the sanctity of the election system.

“This is not a partisan issue. It is important, and it goes across partisan bounds. I think it is important that it doesn’t matter which party it is. It is important that people adhere to that and they follow the voting laws.”