Candidate for Bladen County Commissioner, David Gooden filed a protest with the Bladen County Board of Elections this morning at 10 a.m. The protest is regarding alleged actions of Candidate Michael Cogdell during the General Elections.
Both Gooden and Cogdell were candidates for one of the three available Bladen County-wide Commissioners seats during the General Election. Both Gooden and Cogdell are Bladen County Commissioners running for re-election. After a recount held the last Saturday in November the local board confirmed Cogdell won the third county seat after receiving 11 votes over Gooden.
Republican Chair, Wayne Schaeffer, assisted Gooden with the protest process. The protest is based on an incident report submitted by Mr. Bobby Ludlum regarding alleged actions of Mr. Michael Cogdell.
Read Ludlum’s statement submitted with his incident report below:
Chris Williams local elections director contacted, Kelly Tornow, Assistant Legal Counsel to the NC State Board of Elections once the protest was filed. Williams stated he did not know how long the state board would take to respond to the protest.
Schaeffer did suggest the swearing-in of the new commissioners scheduled for today needed to be stopped until the protest was processed. After Williams confirmed with the state assistance attorney, Tornow, he said the swearing in process of the county commissioners would not be stopped due to the protest.
The reporter reached out to Candidate Michael Cogdell for his statement about the allegations against him stated in the protest filed today. At the time of publication, Mr. Cogdell has not made contact with Bladen Online with a statement.
More information will be published as soon as it is made available. View a video of the protest being filed on our YouTube Channel.
Update:
Kelly Tornow, Associate General Counsel, responded to Candidate’s David Gooden’s protest today. In an email, Tornow addresses Mr. Gooden, “Your submissions have been provided to the State Board. However, the certificate of election has been issued in this contest, and the county commissioners are being sworn in this evening. Case law provides that once a certificate of election has been issued, it is not subject to attack except in a civil quo warranto proceeding. See Cohoon v. Smith, 216 N.C. 317 (1939); In re Protest of Whittacre, 228 N.C. App. 58 (2013).”
She added, “A candidate can file an election protest within 24 hours after a recount or by noon of the county board office’s next business day, whichever is later (08 NCAC 09 .1016(h)). . The recount concluded on November 21, so the deadline to file an election protest was noon on Monday, November 23 – two weeks prior to today.”
Bladen County Republican chair, Wayne Schaeffer’s response to Tornow response is, “We are exploring other options.”
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