At least 16 'never residents' who are poised to have ballots tossed have actually lived in North Carolina
A preliminary review shows many of the 260 voters stand to have their ballots wrongly removed. The North Carolina Court of Appeals is expected to soon direct elections officials to toss out the votes.
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At least 16 North Carolina voters from 10 different counties are poised to have their ballots immediately removed from the Supreme Court tally without any opportunity to address concerns a Republican candidate has with their ballots, a preliminary Anderson Alerts review of the challenged voters shows.
To overturn an apparent 734-vote defeat to Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin contested the ballots of 260 North Carolinians, labeling them as “never residents.”
The North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled this month that the State Board of Elections must remove all 260 voters from the count. The state Supreme Court upheld that decision.
In response, Riggs appealed to federal court, where a Trump-appointed judge ruled over the weekend that Judges Fred Gore and John Tyson may proceed with directing state elections officials to remove the so-called “never residents” from the vote count.
“The totality of the circumstances indicates the domicile of the parents of these absentee, ‘Never Resident’ voters was overseas,” Gore and Tyson had concluded. “These ‘Never Resident’ voters, who were born to parents overseas, were never brought to North Carolina to reside during the entirety of their eighteen-year dependency as minors, and their domicile is overseas.”
But a review of public records, news clips, social media posts, and interviews show many of those people have indeed lived in the state, with some having spent their entire childhood in North Carolina, continuing to pay property taxes or working in the state.
The at-risk voters include military servicemembers based out of Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, college professors, young adults working or studying abroad, a former D1 swimmer and even an aspiring actress.
Cameron Avila, a postal worker at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, has his vote challenged, as does Capt. Jacob Sugg— a UNC-Wilmington alum who’s worked for the Marines since at least 2019.
They’re far from the only ones whose votes face imminent risk.
Abdulai Conteh, who has served as a U.S. Army mechanic since 2017 and is based out of Fort Bragg, also faces the same challenge to his ballot.
Josey Wright, a Pitt County voter, stands to have her Supreme Court vote discarded.
“I lived in Pitt County until I was 18, when I moved to England for my undergrad, although I was back in NC most summers/Christmas vacations,” Wright told Anderson Alerts. “I am currently still in Cambridge working on my PhD but have voted in North Carolina elections as an overseas voter since I moved in 2017.”
Wright has voted without issue since 2018. She also noted she worked at Duke University one summer through a residential program and continues to travel back to North Carolina two to three times per year to be with her family.
“It’s ridiculous that they’re trying to discount so many people who have every legal right to vote in NC elections,” Wright said.
Neil McWilliam, an Orange County voter, taught at Duke’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences from 2003 to 2023 and is a naturalized citizen. Since retiring from Duke, he’s lived in France. He’s infuriated to now find himself on Griffin’s list.
“As appears to be the case with much of Mr. Griffin's questioning of the result for the NC Supreme Court, the challenge to my vote is spurious,” McWilliam told Anderson Alerts. “I hope this is of help, though in the current climate, it is hard to be confident of a just outcome.”
Wake County Board of Elections Member Gerry Cohen said the challenged ballots are likely the result of the voters checking a box on a Federal Post Card Application that read, “I am a U.S. citizen living outside the country, I have never lived in the United States.” Cohen said voters may very well have checked the box in error.
If the Court of Appeals retains its position that such ballots ought to be immediately discarded, these voters and others stand to be left without any remedy.
Anderson Alerts identified 16 voters who were born in North Carolina, resided in North Carolina, still live in North Carolina, or some combination of the three. Additional voters may very well fall into these groups, but further review would be needed to reach a definitive conclusion.
Here’s the other “never resident” voters who stand to have their ballots wrongfully discarded:
Vidyaranya Gargeya (Guilford County): A retired professor who taught at UNC-Greensboro for 30 years who, according to the school, has visited every college in the state. He’s paid property taxes at the same suburban Guilford County home he’s owned since 2003, according to public records. And voting records show he voted in-person on Election Day eight times without issue, and has voted in every midterm and presidential general election since 2006. He appears to have cast an overseas mail-in ballot for the 2024 election. And his nextdoor neighbor confirmed on Saturday that Gargeya does indeed live next to him.
Josiah Young (Jackson County): Young was raised in Webster, played basketball for Jackson County Early College and runs a drone photography business based in western North Carolina. Young, who briefly studied abroad in Spain at the time of last year’s election, said he was born and raised in Jackson County and has never been out of the country for more than three to four months a time.
He said it’s possible he checked the wrong box on an FPCA application, but can’t remember. He said he voted for Riggs. He’s now livid that he’s left with no recourse to get his vote counted. “It just shows that there's really no interest in them trying to find out if these ballots are actual citizens or not," Young said. "It's clearly just to give [Griffin] an advantage in this election. If they wanted to look into this even just a little bit, it's pretty clear that my residence is in Jackson County. It's really not that hard to figure that out."
Michelle Carrillo-Corujo (Guilford County): Corujo grew up in North Carolina. She attended Crestdale Middle School in Matthews in 2015 and has largely remained in North Carolina ever since. She graduated from UNC-Greensboro last year with a degree in political science and recently moved to the Netherlands for further academic pursuits.
Holly Arrowood (Henderson County): Arrowood has been a North Carolina voter since 2008 and has cast a ballot in-person on Election Day seven times. She also appears to still live in Chapel Hill.
Jean-Louis Mondon (Henderson County): Mondon has been a U.S. citizen since 1986, has long lived in North Carolina and has voted in the state since at least 1994. He taught English, French and Spanish at Blue Ridge Community College from 2005 to 2009, runs a Christian blog and is a private tutor and linguist.
David Eberhard (Orange County): Eberhard is a longtime neurologist and taught at UNC-Chapel Hill from 2011 to 2016.
Austyn Blamy (Union County): Blamy graduated from high school at Cuthbertson High School in Waxhaw and has been a seasonal swim coach there since 2018, according to her LinkedIn page. Blamy was also a D1 athlete from 2023-2024 for Liberty University’s swim team.
Ayse Babahan (Wake County): Babahan was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Istanbul. She graduated from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York and is now an actress living overseas.
Vicki Brent (Wake County): Brent attended Millbrook High School in Raleigh from 2017 to 2021 and served on the Wake County Black Student Coalition.
Eric Hoffman (Wake County): Hoffman attended UNC-Chapel Hill from 2014 to 2016 and got a master’s degree in business administration and has been a registered North Carolina voter since 2011. He’s since worked out of Holly Springs and Australia.
Sergio Cutiva Valencia (Watauga County): Valencia is an Appalachian State University alum who graduated in 2022.
Based on public records, at least 11 additional voters in Griffin’s “never resident” protest appeared to have lived or currently live in North Carolina. But a more robust review for them and others would be needed.
Update: This story was updated at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, April 14, to include perspective from Josiah Young, a “never resident” listed on Griffin’s protest who spent his entire childhood in Jackson County and has never been overseas for more than three to four months at a time.
The only “quick” remedy I can think of is that one of these people,or more,need to sue the state board of elections and or the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Insanity!