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NC Election Controversy Complaint

In the last week of October 2021, the required number of Candidates and Qualified Voters filed an “Election Controversy Complaint” with the National NAACP Office.  Our Complaint was based on the National Constitution and By-Laws found on the National NAACP Website at page 60-61 which states:

State/State-Area Conference Election Controversy:

      (a) In the event of election controversy, all parties thereto shall submit complaints to the National Office—said complaints must be postmarked not later than ten (10) days following the date of the election in question. The complaints must be signed by at least twenty-five (25) voting delegates who were in attendance at the Convention. Said delegates must represent at least five (5) units registered at the Convention.

     (b) The National Office will institute an investigation into the matter, and should a determination be made that the complaint is frivolous or completely devoid of merit, or that the election result could not have been otherwise even if the allegations alleged are assumed to be true, then the National Office shall within thirty (30) days, or as soon thereafter as possible, dismiss the complaint and inform all parties forthwith that the installation of officers might be held.

     (c) Should the National Office be unable to dismiss the complaint because the charges appear to have merit and as such, the results of the election might have been otherwise had the alleged violations not occurred, then the matter will be referred to the Chairperson of the Committee on Membership and Units of the Board of Directors, who will designate a Hearing Panel.

      (d) Pending resolution of the dispute, the officers whose terms were to have expired with the new election will continue to function. 

(e) Authority of the National Office. The National Office shall have authority to intervene at any time during the period leading up to the State Conference election. Such authority includes suspending the process and instituting corrective action to assure that the rights of all members are protected.

Green Card and Tracking Notice

A complaint to the National Office was filed, weeks dragged on with no response. The complainants got the green card verifying the National Office had been served with the Election Controversy Complaint in a timely manner, but no response within the 30 days was received, nor any reason received for dismissal.

Derrick Johnson Letter

Finally on December 14th 2021, the NAACP National President Derrick Johnson, with no reference to the applicable by-laws quoted above, emailed the complainants and Ms. Deborah Maxwell, the recipient of about a third of the eligible voters, declaring the Election Controversy Complaint untimely, based on the wrong set of by-laws (see below).

Article IX complaint Filed a Month before Election

The letter from the National President was based on by-laws governing Unit Branches, not State Conference Election Controversies for the largest state conference in the Jim Crow South. The research and thought behind the letter we received was frivolous. There was no reference to the multiple Filings of the NC NAACP Constitutionalists to the National office over the past two years. Particularly troubling, there was no mention of the Article IX Complaint the NC Constitutionalists had filed a month BEFORE the October 23rd elections. This spelled out the many violations of Article IX that were being made during the past year.

Article X

The Chair of the Membership & Units Committee at its regular meeting did not discuss the complaint at the Committee’s regular meeting, and we were advised the only way to get an unbiased investigation of our complaints about these constitutional breaches was to file an Article X about them.

Please click the link below to view the Parliamentary Opinion.

Click here to view the NAACP State Election Procedures Manual