Appeals Court agrees unaffiliated Orange County candidate needed fewer signatures

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has sided with an unaffiliated Orange County candidate and against the local elections board in a 2023 dispute involving petition signatures. The decision Wednesday reverses a trial judge’s ruling in the case.

The ruling will reduce the number of petition signatures an unaffiliated candidate will need to secure to appear on the local ballot in future elections.

Connor Fraley wanted to run as an unaffiliated candidate in the 2022 election for Orange County’s District 2 county commissioner seat. The county attorney determined that Fraley would need to secure petition signatures from 4% of the total county’s registered voter population, rather than 4% of the voters living in District 2.

While Orange County has county commissioner districts, all county voters elect each commissioner.

Fraley did not secure the required signatures to appear on the 2022 ballot.

He filed suit in January 2023. He asked for a declaratory judgment stating that the proper standard should have been 4% of the voters in his nominating district. A trial judge dismissed the case the following month.

Now, more than two years later, a unanimous state Appeals Court panel has ruled in Fraley’s favor.

“Plaintiff maintains the trial court committed error by interpreting N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-122(a)(3) as requiring him to secure four percent of the qualified voters in the county when filing his written petition of candidacy,” Judge Michael Stading wrote. “Plaintiff argues N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-122(a)(3) and Orange County Code § 13-3(b)(2) require him to only secure four percent of the qualified voters in District 2 when filing his written petition of candidacy. After careful consideration, we agree.”

“Here, the trial court erroneously determined that Plaintiff, an unaffiliated candidate who desired to appear on the general election ballot for an office ‘for a district consisting of less than the entire county,’ was required to obtain four percent of the total number of qualified voters in the whole county under subsection 163-122(a)(3),” Stading added. “But a plain reading of the statute supports an interpretation that to be nominated for District 2, Plaintiff was only required to garner signatures ‘by qualified voters of the district equal in number to four percent (4%) of the total number of voters in the district[.]’”

“To that end, Orange County Code § 13-3(b)(2) expressly provides, ‘the qualified voters of each district shall nominate candidates who reside in the district for seats apportioned to that district, and the qualified voters of the entire county shall nominate candidates for seats apportioned to the county at large,’” the Appeals Court opinion continued.

“The requirement that ‘only the voters in that district vote for that office’ is referring to the nomination process, not the election process, in the context of the ordinance. Accordingly, the trial court committed error by awarding summary judgment for Defendant,” Stading explained.

The Appeals Court returned the case to a trial judge for an order granting Fraley’s motion for summary judgment.

Judges Donna Stroud and Julee Flood joined Stading’s opinion.

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