According to Faye Gill, Director of the Vance County Board of Elections, a hearing will be held on Thursday, August 17 at 10:00 a.m. to challenge page 73 of George Hoyle’s petition to be placed on the ballot for the sheriff’s race in November.
Hoyle, a sergeant in the Vance County Sheriff’s Office, started his last-minute petition campaign to be placed on the ballot after Sheriff R. Thomas Breedlove’s defeat in the March Democratic primary. His candidacy has been controversial.
Gill indicated that the whole page is being challenged. She also told Home in Henderson that it is her first experience with a petition being challenged.
The page is being challenged because of the blanks at the top of the page that were not filled in, according to Gill, especially the blank preceded by “candidate for the office of”.
The space in which the name of the county should have been written was also left blank.
A copy of the page in question obtained by Home in Henderson shows two highlighted signatures. The signatures appear to be in the same handwriting. According to Gill, this had nothing to do with the challenge.
A copy of page 73 of the petition may be viewed here.
The highlights over the signatures, which appear as grey in the photocopy, were placed there by the Board of Elections.
The director stated that she could not comment on the specifics of the case and directed inquiries to James Kearney, the Chairman of the Vance County Board of Elections. When contacted by Home in Henderson by telephone, Kearney refused to take the call. A request for a return call went unanswered at time of publication.
Hoyle was previously certified to have obtained 991 signatures. The threshhold for having his name placed on the ballot is 981 signatures. Should the challenge to the page be successful, Hoyle would lose his place on the ballot, as there are twenty signatures on the page.
Gill was unable to specify what party or parties brought the challenge.