The North Carolina Court of Appeals has blocked certification of the 2023 Pembroke mayor’s race as Mayor Greg Cummings continues to challenge the results.
Challenger Allen Dial leads Cummings by 19 votes (197 to 178), according to State Board of Elections records of the November 2023 contest. But Cummings has been challenging those results for more than a year.
“By unanimous vote,” an unnamed three-judge Appeals Court panel issued an order Tuesday granting Cummings a temporary stay. Cummings had requested the stay Monday as he pursues an order called a writ of supersedeas that would block a lower court’s ruling in the legal fight.
Superior Court Judge Matthew Houston had signed an order filed March 18 that affirmed the State Board of Elections’ ruling against Cummings.
“Robeson County has a history of voting irregularities,” Cummings’ lawyers wrote. Dial “was a candidate in 2013 and 2015 elections that were overturned as a result of voter misconduct.”
Cummings has been fighting the election result since filing an official protest 15 days after Election Day. Dial intervened in the court proceedings in May 2024.
The Robeson County election board reviewed the dispute in July 2024. “Testimony was given during the County Board hearing that certain voters in the Mayoral Election listed their residential address as an abandoned lot owned by Intervenor,” Cummings’ lawyers wrote. “Voters associated with Intervenor’s lot all registered to vote on 13 October 2023. Another voter listed her residential address as a restaurant owned by Intervenor. Other voters listed their residential addresses as housing that could not be verified as their residences.”
Dial said he helped people living in a tent community register to vote, according to local media reports about the local elections board hearing.
The Robeson elections board ultimately dismissed Cummings’ appeal on July 15, 2024. The state board followed suit in September 2024.
Cummings argues that a writ of supersedeas is proper because of “extraordinary circumstances” and because “it is in the interests of justice to preserve the status quo, during the pendency of this appeal.”
The court filing accused the county and state elections boards of acting “arbitrarily and capriciously.”
Cummings and Dial have faced each other multiple times in Pembroke mayor’s races. The state ordered a new election after their 2015 contest because of Cummings’ concerns about voting irregularities.
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