Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

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For good or ill, at least three Democrats in the Tarheel State have taken steps to ensure a progressive third-party candidate for the U.S. Senate remains off the ballot.

At issue is the case of Matthew Hoh, the presumptive nominee for the Green Party and a man who would, in theory, draw votes from Democrat Cheri Beasley in November’s general election, which will fill the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Congressman Ted Budd will represent the Republican Party in this general election.

According to Ballotpedia, there are six non-big-two candidates besides Hoh already in the election – five independents and a Libertarian. But only Hoh has been denied a place on the ballot following a ruling by the state board of elections, even though the Green Party has gotten enough certified petition signatures to warrant inclusion.

“Over the past several weeks, county boards of elections in North Carolina validated enough signatures by registered voters to put the party over the 13,865 required for recognition under state law,” a release from the board reads. “However, as county boards reviewed Green Party petition sheets and later as the State Board examined these petitions, several counties and State Board staff identified numerous irregularities. The State Board opened an investigation into the apparent irregularities. The investigation is ongoing.”

Late last week, citing the ongoing investigation, the board voted 3-to-2 to deny the Green Party a place on the ballot. The three votes against including the Greens all came from Democrats and the two votes in favor were from Republicans.

Where things get interesting, and the Hoh campaign argues insidious, is that even after removing controversial signatures, the Green Party still had enough signatures to clear the state threshold.

“The NC State Board of Elections’ decision to deny the Green Party our rightfully earned place on the ballot is a corrupt, lawless, and blatantly partisan attack on democracy,” Hoh said in a statement. “It’s a slap in the face to the thousands of people who signed, to our grassroots organizers who worked tirelessly to collect thousands of signatures during an ongoing pandemic, and to everyone who believes in democracy itself.”

The Green Party submitted more than 22,500 signatures, of which just under 16,000 were verified by county boards.

After the board began investigating, it listed among its concerns that some people appeared to have signed more than once or on behalf of someone else, contractors hired by the Green Party to collect signatures had submitted fake names, and the list contained outdated signatures or those belonging to deceased voters.

Hoh counters that all of the issues cited, even if true, still left the party with north of 15,000 verified signatures.

The board seems to have failed to appreciate the optics of denying even a relatively small group of voters the chance to support the candidate they choose and has shown no interest in explaining how many signatures it views as proper. 

According to Hoh’s campaign, at the board meeting in which the Green Party was denied entry onto the ballot, SBOE Chair Damon Circosta, a Democrat, refused to answer when the Greens’ attorney asked if there was any evidence that the remaining 15,953 verified signatures warranted exclusion. When the attorney repeated the question, Circosta had the lawyer’s microphone muted.

Not helping the optics is the source of the initial complaint. As reported in greater detail by The Carolina Journal, the complaint was made by Jacquelyn Lopez of the Elias Law Group on behalf of the state’s Democratic Party.

The Elias group – which lists in its Twitter bio that the firm helps “Democrats win, citizens vote and progressives make change” – is a powerful national law firm indelibly linked to the Democrats, having most notably worked alongside Hillary Clinton. 

The firm’s involvement is legal, and Democrats have the right to request board intervention, but Hoh’s campaign accuses the Elias Group, as well as the North Carolina Democratic Party and the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, of working to protect Beasley’s election chances at the expense of North Carolina voters.

Specifically, the campaign alleges the Elias Group repeatedly called, texted, and visited the homes of petition signatories in an effort to get the voters to remove their signatures on the grounds that the stakes were too high for a progressive third party to take even a small number of votes from Democrats this fall.

“We’ve been hearing from folks across the state that they’re being bombarded with phone calls, text messages, and even people coming to their houses demanding to remove their signature from the Green Party petition,” Campaign Manager Rose Roby said in a June 29 statement. “We have recorded evidence of these callers falsely representing themselves as calling on behalf of the Green Party, while making misleading to outright false claims to pressure people to remove their names from a petition they already signed. Our campaign team has seen a lot of dirty tricks from the establishment parties over the years, but none of us has ever seen such a massive, deceitful, and shameless campaign of voter intimidation to try to sabotage a successful grassroots petition drive.”

I just received this text. This is @dscc attempting to subvert @NorthCarolinaGP’s successful petitioning for ballot access. They are proving that Dems nor GOP care for democracy, only maintaining power. Please help us fight back: https://t.co/rwj2t8risJ
Please RT.#ncpol pic.twitter.com/AZDZUypkap

— Matthew Hoh (@MatthewPHoh) June 25, 2022

Hoh – who tweeted screenshots of text messages sent by someone purporting to be from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and asking a petitioner to reconsider – also provided The Carolina Journal with a recording of a phone call in which someone, Hoh says it is an operative working on behalf of Democrats, identifies himself as a volunteer representing the Green Party and asks a second man to reconsider including his signature on the petition. 

The former Marine has also pledged to continue to fight, likely in court, to overcome the setback.

“When the Democratic Party decided to go to war to try to push a disabled Marine combat veteran off the ballot, they should have known: we’re not going to back down from a fight for our democracy,” Hoh said. “We will stand up and fight this outrageous corruption, and the establishment’s desperate attacks on us will only inspire more and more people across North Carolina to stand with us as the only campaign fighting for working people, the planet, peace, and real democracy.”

As of this writing, none of the North Carolina Democrat Party, Elias Group, and Democrat Senate Campaign Committee’s websites and social media presences contain any mention of Hoh or the Green Party. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has issued no additional comment beyond its initial release.