Perdue picks elections board

Gov. Beverly Perdue appointed members to the State Board of Elections on Monday.

Perdue was required by law to appoint members from lists submitted by the state political parties. The board includes three Democrats and two Republicans who serve four year terms.

Perdue reappointed Democrats Larry Leake of Mars Hill and Robert Cordle of Charlotte, as well as Republican Charles Winfree of Greensboro. New appointees were Democrat Anita Earls of Durham and Republican William Peaslee of Raleigh.

They replace Democrat Genevieve Sims and Republican Lorraine Shinn.

Earls is executive director and founder of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a position she has held since September 2007. From 2003 to 2007, she was director of advocacy at the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Earls also served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998 to 2000.

She received a law degree from Yale University and an undergraduate degree from Williams College.

Peaslee runs a general practice law firm in Cary. He was political director, special legal counsel and chief of staff of the state Republican Party until 2006.

Peaslee received a law degree from Campbell University and an undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.

The State Board of Elections supervises and regulates primary and general elections in North Carolina.

Election official: McCrory reports complete

A senior elections official says it was a Board of Elections computer glitch that led to incomplete information on Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory's campaign finance reports.

Kim Strach, deputy director of the state Board of Elecitons, said McCrory's first quarter reports were filled out completely to include occupation and employment information for donors. But when the state's Web site pulled the information for report searches, a glitch left some fields blank.

Strach said she discovered the error after a story highlighted the missing information in McCrory's reports. She spoke with campaign officials from the McCrory campaign today.

McCrory's campaign won't have to amend its reports. Strach said that elections officials will add the missing information to the publicly available database.

On Friday, McCrory campaign Manager Richard Hudson said campaign officials had collected the required information and submitted it according to the Board of Election's instructions. Hudson said McCrory has always stressed transparency.

"This is something that he has taken very seriously from the beginning," Hudson said.

Auditor: Avoid nepotism at elections board

State auditor Les Merritt said today that the State Board of Elections had an apparent conflict of interest when it hired the spouse of a top official.

Merritt's report concerns Johnnie McLean, chief deputy director of the State Board of Elections, and her husband, who was hired in March as a temporary voting equipment employee. Merritt found that McLean was not supervising her husband, Robert McLean, and that since he was a temporary employee, state law did not specifically bar the board from hiring him.

However, the state personnel office "recommends that state agencies also attempt to avoid nepotism when hiring temporary employees," Merritt wrote. "We recommend that the Board of Elections avoid hiring related temporary employees in the future to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest."

On April 21, Robert McLean's assignment with the board ended, Gary Bartlett, executive director of the elections board, wrote in his response to Merritt's report. Bartlett wrote that the state's temporary employment agency twice told Robert McLean that he could work for the board if he didn't report to his wife.

More after the jump.

Turnout in Wake County

As of 2:15 p.m., 13 precincts in Wake County had reported early turnout numbers at the polls.

Precinct 1-15 had the highest percentage at 27 percent. The district is 90 percent white, 57 percent female and is located in a liberal enclave near Meredith College and N.C. State and not far from Whole Foods.

Precinct 1-29 had a turnout of 26 percent. It's 97 percent white and 53 percent female. The site is located in a middle-class neighborhood near the North Hills mall.

The precinct reporting the lowest turnout, 1-23, had received 7 percent of its voters at 1:30 p.m. The site is on the corner of Hillsborough Street and Pullen Road, mainly a neighborhood of college students. The district is 56 percent male.

The average turnout percentage for all reporting precincts was 16.8 percent. The highest number of voters at any one precinct so far was 698.

The numbers don't account for absentee and one-stop votes, which will be released at 7:30 p.m.

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