Will Dead Voters Make Election Officials' Heads Roll?
Administrative Court ruling may end the careers of seven current or former Wake and Rowan election board members and possibly even drag down an SBE attorney
Feb 25, 2026 — An Administrative Law Judge’s 15-page opinion, issued yesterday by ALJ Linda F. Nelson, will force the NC State Board of Elections (SBE) to reverse their prior dismissal of a case brought by Buncombe County’s Steve Holland and Rowan County’s Mike Frazier, who demanded certain County Board of Election (CBE) members be fired for ignoring state law and SBE guidance, when they voted to count some ballots cast by people who died prior to Election Day in 2024.
[Note: If you are a frequent reader of VoteChecker’s Substack, you may recall our prior report on this case, where ALJ Nelson issued the ruling and pulled it back less than 24 hours later. Today’s story reports on the for-real “final” opinion she issued on this case.]
At issue, was a whacky decision by two CBEs to accept ballots cast by voters who were no longer alive by Election Day, 2024.
NC law holds special significance to people’s eligibility to vote, as of Election Day, allowing 17-year-olds to vote in any primary elections, provided they are 18 years old before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, commonly called “Election Day.”
If the fledgling voter’s birthday falls one day after Election Day, then they will not be able to vote in any of the elections prior to that date.
This concept also applies to anybody convicted of a felony after they voted but before Election Day. In one famous 2014 case, Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon, had been booted from office after pleading guilty to bribery charges. While awaiting his prison assignment for a 22-month sentence, he voted! In a rare prosecution involving vote fraud, Mecklenburg DA Andrew Murray went after Cannon and accepted a plea deal to “attempted vote fraud,” a misdemeanor.
Fun Fact: Shortly after the Cannon affair, my team approached Murray about prosecuting two interstate-double voting referrals. We knew about the cases because we originally investigated them, referred them to election officials, and the SBI had recommended prosecution. During aggressive negotiations between my team and Murray’s, he brandished the Cannon prosecution as proof of his toughness on voter fraud. When he refused to prosecute our cases, we invoked a nifty little NC law that allows a private citizen to petition a Superior Court Judge to appoint a Special Prosecutor when a sketchy DA refuses to prosecute cases involving either voter fraud or campaign finance fraud. After the Trump (1.0) White House announced Murray’s nomination to US Attorney for NC’s Western District, we filed the petition and the sparks flew. Sadly, Murray was confirmed and later got himself elected DA of Henderson County, NC.
The upshot here is that felons, just like dead people, can have their ballots thrown out during post-election administrative actions leading up a contest winner being “certified” as the winner.
In the Holland/Frazier complaint, the offending election officials were four members of the Rowan County Board of Elections (Loutricia W. Cain, John T. Hudson, Catreila S. Hunter and Kenneth L. Stutts), and three members of the Wake County Board of Elections (Gerry Cohen, Gregg Flynn1, and Erica Porter).
Holland and Frazier filed for their dismissal, alleging they “breached their duties or otherwise acted improperly as county board of election members,” which is a valid grounds for being booted off of any state-sanctioned board or commission.
That same provision served in 2023 as the spirit of charges against two Surry County Republican CBE members, Tim DeHaan and Jerry Foresteri, after they refused to certify the 2022 general elections. As a result of the charges, the SBE voted for their removal.
Before taking the vote, Board Chair, Damon Circosta, gently lectured DeHaan and Foresteri. While Circosta later left the SBE after ethics complaint was filed against him, his words that day (see the 36:50 mark in this video) were were delivered with great solemnity. He preached an idea the later Board must have forgotten when they dismissed the Holland/Fraser complaint:
“We are at a time in our country where the left and the right are at each other’s throats. But the only thing we have holding us together is the law. And while I do not relish this at all, we have to follow the law as it is presented to us.”2
Democrat Party Protection Racket
The SBE’s 2023 decision was a 4-0 vote, with three Democrats and the lone Republican present, Stacey “Four” Eggers, voting to uphold the law against the two Republican members of Surry County’s Board of Elections. The only other Republican on that board, (former) State Senator, Tommy Tucker, was not present.
Had Tucker been present, DeHaan and Foresteri were ready to throw it in his face that their removal would have forced his too. Tucker, you may recall, famously refused to certify the 2020 election results. But Eggers voted with the majority, upholding his view of the board members’ legal, or “ministerial” duties to certify elections.
At the risk of going too far afield, certification is a sticky wicket, because it’s the only leverage a board member has when s/he believes the election has serious problems. In fact, this was the weapon wielded by (then) SBE member, Josh Malcolm, in the SBE’s successful 2018-19 proceeding designed to oust (then) Congressman-elect Mark Harris before he could be sworn in.
The Feb 2019 probable cause hearing over that race went sideways when Harris agreed to testify under oath. At the time, he was fighting a freak illness with a powerful intravenous medical protocol that affected his memory. When he misstated a fact during his testimony, SBE Counsel Josh Lawson halted the proceeding and coordinated with Wake District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who “was ready” to prosecute Harris for perjury unless he immediately resigned.
The heart-broken Harris stepped down but he was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing over the entire affair. The good news here is that he fully recovered from the illness and got himself elected to Congress in 2024!
I cite these SBE prosecutions to ask one reason: Are you seeing a pattern?
Harris was a Republican.
DeHaan was a Republican.
Foresteri was a Republican.
Holland and Frazier did go after one Republican, but they also had the audacity to question the integrity of six Democrats! Making their matter even worse, one of theDemocrat board members, Gerry Cohen, had—yes, had—a bright future ahead of him. Quoting from my previous Stack about this Deep-State Darling…
Prior to his retirement from the State Legislature, Cohen headed up the Bill Drafting Division and oversaw the wording of NC’s first voter-ID law back in 2013.
A terrible surprise in that bill (HB589) was a loophole that none of us caught until after it had become law. Through crafty word smithing, it forced the reader to flip through other parts of NC law that were not in the bill. The result subtly exempted curbside voters from showing a photo ID. Nobody ever debated that idea, and Cohen was in the perfect position to sneak it into the 49-page bill. I asked a lot of people involved, but never got to him.
Through a process of elimination, I concluded that either Election Committee Chair, David Lewis, or House Speaker Thom Tillis had ordered the subversive act. When I confronted Lewis, he deflected to how “we can’t go after old people.” [The late] Thom Farr was flabbergasted by the loophole and committee member Michael Speciale was livid.
Gerry Cohen was in charge of the actual verbiage so he either did it on his own volition or Lewis/Tillis ordered it. But back to today, according to Cohen’s impressive resume, he’s also an adjunct professor at Duke. Clearly, he still has friends in low places. If Cohen were to get fired from his Board position, it would be a devastating blow to his reputation and his career.
Holland and Frazier filed their complaint against Cohen et. al. in December 2024, and the SBE conducted the prima facie review of their Request for Hearing at an official meeting held on January 22, 2025. This was when Democrats still controlled the agency and the Board.
Showing their true colors, the three Democrat SBE members seemed not to notice the cold-hard facts of Holland/Frazier’s case and openly speculated on the rational on why such esteemed Democrat CBE members would take such an illegal action. Then, by a 3-2 vote, they protected the six Democrat CBE members by dismissing the matter, falsely claiming Holland and Frazier had failed to provide “prima facie evidence of a violation of election of laws and duties of a county board member…”
I can’t imagine what kind of evidence would have won them over, but Holland, Frazier, and several others were steaming. After all, they gave the SBE the official transcripts of the two CBE meetings, which proved they approved votes from deceased voters. Holland and Frazier also included copies of the applicable statute and amplifying guidance that same SBE had approved under Executive Director Karen Brinson-Bell. It was an open-and-shut case… unless you wantonly ignore the evidence.
Legal Malpractice
Normally, after a decision this significant, the Board’s legal staff drafts up a “final order” that clearly states their finding of facts, their basis in the law, and their ultimate decision to reject the petition. The document is also supposed to contain instructions on how the losing side can appeal the Board’s decision. Evidently, creating such a document in a credible way was too much for their legal staff.
At the time, Holland, who’s not an attorney, told me he was planning to appeal the case. His problem was that the SBE attorneys seemed to be dragging their feet on issuing that important document. This was despite a few friendly—but firm—nudges from Holland himself.
The procedures, as laid out in NC’s Administrative Procedures Act, grants this type of remedy to the NC Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH), provided Holland and Frazier file their notice appeal within 60 days of the Agency’s issuance of the final order.
Without the final order, Holland and Frazier were dead in the water.
Smelling a rat, Holland went ahead and filed a notice of appeal on his own volition. That was on April 15th. Pardon the details, but the dates are important in such matters. This filing came 80 days after the January 22 prima facie review hearing.
Among other reasons, the SBE brazenly dismissed Holland and Frazier’s appeal on the basis of the timing! Perhaps mistaking Holland for someone who’s intimidated by lawyers, they effectively said, “Sorry bub. That appeal was due by the 60th day, so you’re too late.” Whether the SBE’s lawyers were stupid or evil is a question for another day, but their rationale for the tardy claim was both laughable and unprecedented.
If you think about it for even a moment, it’s even maddening. What kind of justice system would reward agency dereliction of duty by dismissing charges against said agency justified by their dereliction? The answer would be a “captured” justice system and say what you will about NC’s courts, we now know of at least one Administrative Law Judge who doesn’t abuse the law.
With no sense of impending doom, the SBE attorneys claimed they had given notice! How? They pretended to believe that our state’s Open Meetings Law somehow gave them cover. In other words, the fact that Holland attended the meeting and Frazier later watched a recording of it, they effectively had been noticed! SBE attorneys tried to tell ALJ Nelson that their actions were good enough for government work.
Cutting through the chaff, Nelson stuck to objective reality. She scolded, “the fact of the filing of the Petition and the fact that the State Board did not send a written notice are the only facts material to the legal determination of timeliness [emphasis added].
In a polite, but devastating rebuke, Nelson added, “viewed in the light most favorable to the State Board, these facts are not adequate to start the running of the limitations period. The Tribunal holds that the Petition was timely filed because the State Board did not provide the notice to Petitioners required by N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-23(f).”
As Holland’s press release later said, the Democrat-controlled Board “‘erred as a matter of law in determining that the Request[s] for Hearing did not establish a prima facie case,’ and ordered the Board to hold hearings to determine whether the board members who had complaints filed against them should be removed from office.”
Whose Heads Should Roll?
In addition to seven current or former CBE members, methinks an SBE attorney or two need to walk the plank. But who…? And how…?
Recall that until now, everything happened in this case before State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican, gained some limited authority over the State Board of Elections. Not long after that, the attorney leading that agency, Paul Cox, fled for a private sector gig.
That may seem like the end of his story, but I’ve recently learned why that’s not really the case. After his abrupt departure, he evidently became a Partner at Poyner and Spruill, a big law firm that once got a chunk of change from NC’s Democrat Party.
This matters because every county in NC really needs legal representation in election-related matters. Lots of counties go the impoverished route and magically declare their County Attorney competent enough to practice in this arcane area of the law. Believe me when I say that I’ve spent 15+ years watching many of those counties up-close and their County Attorneys often embarrass themselves by publicly displaying a pompous ignorance of election law. No bueno.
The more responsible counties frequently hire outside counsel who know a thing or two about election law. Such attorneys have either litigated in election-related matters or they’ve served as board members themselves. My team has actually helped a few attorneys go that route and they picked up some nice part-time retainers.
But bad things can happen too.
After 2025’s round of municipal elections, the Lee County Board of Election, of which I am a board member, had to handle a deeply serious and confidential complaint filed by an election worker. That was when I learned we that Lee County was among the responsible counties that have hired outside counsel.
You won’t need three guesses to learn exactly who our attorney of record was. Yup. It was good ol’ Paul Cox. I wonder how many other counties have given him one of these plumb gigs. I wonder if that’s how he became a "Partner” in just a few short months.
Meanwhile, all during the Cox era of bad legal work at SBE, their Deputy Counsel was a younger lawyer named Adam Steele. I’ve heard rumblings that he was reassigned to a different position under the newly constituted SBE, but he remains at the agency. The question of his involvement in the Holland/Frazer affair is something only the Board can determine, but don’t be surprised if he suddenly disappears.
To sum up the latest news… Administrative Law Judge Nelson has issued a ruling that forces the SBE to hold another hearing over the Holland/Frazier complaint. Only this time, rather than speculating on the motives of the poorly performing CBE members, she ordered them to stick to the facts.
And those pesky facts all point one way: Six Democrats and one Republican are finally going to face the consequences of their 2024 decision to violate both state law and an SBE written directive, that had the force of law.
And recalling Circosta’s words to DeHaan and Foresteri, “we have to follow the law as it is presented to us.” Inconvenient as it may be, if the SBE does their job correctly this time, seven or eight heads are about to roll!
~ jd
Flynn was not selected for the post-Boliek Wake CBE, but we’ve recently been told he has been appointed to fill a vacancy created when Porter resigned.
Note: I updated this section after initial publication at the behest of Tim DeHaan. Besides correcting the spelling of his very-Dutch name, Tim reminded me that the SBE never concluded him of “acting improperly as a board member,” in their final ruling. In researching DeHaan’s critique of this story, I stumbled across Board Chairman Circosta’s ironic remarks… and HAD to add them to this story!