State Auditor Les Merritt's office continues to review North Carolina's voter rolls, more than a year after state lawmakers chided him during a packed committee hearing.
The review became public in June 2007, when Merritt advised senators to delay action on a bill to allow voter registration up to three days before an election, David Ingram reports.
Merritt, a Republican, said he had preliminary findings about potential fraud, which state election officials disputed and some Democrats called partisan.
Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat, called Merritt before a Senate committee to explain himself. The bill later became law.
Merritt's spokesman Chris Mears said this week that auditors are still looking for possible irregularities in who has voted or registered to vote.
"We think that it would be after November for sure before we released any report," Mears said, citing the upcoming election. "We wouldn't want our report to be used in any way political."
Merritt is running for re-election against Democrat Beth Wood.
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Re: Merrit still checking voter rolls
"The North Carolina Democratic politicians do not want the State Auditor to look at the voter rolls and root out any abuse or fraud? Why not?"
Because his job is to look for wasteful spending of state funds, not clear the roles of voters, whose eligibility to vote he has no training or authority to determine. Merritt is trying to make political noise with this, and keep voters from remembering that he used his own political office to advance his private career while he was still in office.
Seriously, Mr. Terrell. If you are going to run for office yourself, you should do a little research.