THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411170440
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LUMBERTON LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
A failed Republican congressional candidate is within his rights to challenge his election loss, U.S. Rep. Charlie Rose said Wednesday.
GOP challenger Robert Anderson is contesting results that show he lost his third straight challenge to Rose, D-N.C. County election officials say his claims of voter fraud are unfounded.
``I haven't seen what he has,'' Rose said Wednesday. ``I have no knowledge of the things he's talking about.''
``I'm sure he's using all the legal means available to him in North Carolina, and this is as it should be.''
The Robeson County Elections Board has offered to let anyone look at its records.
``We're very confident about the election process,'' Pearlean Revels, elections supervisor of Robeson County, said.
``We feel it was a fair and just election and would welcome anyone to come in and look at anything we did.''
Anderson has released 25 allegations of election-night misdeeds. He began handing over videotapes, audiotapes, sworn depositions and affidavits to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday.
Revels disputed 20 of the 25 claims Anderson has made, but refused to say whether any may be true.
Anderson said he is pursuing his claim along two paths.
First, he wants the U.S. Justice Department and FBI to investigate criminal wrongdoing.
``We met with the FBI for about three hours and gave them 12 affidavits and 11 other names and statements that indicate 25 cases of wrongdoing by the elections board,'' Anderson said.
Second, Anderson wants the U.S. House of Representatives, through a rarely used constitutional provision that makes congressmen the ultimate judge of elections, to hold a hearing on whether the 7th District seat should be his.
Anderson's allegations about Robeson County include:
Poll workers offered money to voters to cast a straight Democratic ticket.
Some people voted at least twice.
People who wanted to vote only for a candidate in the sheriff's race were advised to mark the straight Democratic ticket.
Voters from public housing developments were warned that their rent would rise if they did not vote for Rose.
Elections officials followed people into voting booths and urged them to vote a straight Democratic ticket.
The claims are unfounded, Revels said. Six State Bureau of Investigation agents supervised the voting, she said.
Not only did they not see any of the alleged infractions, but neither they nor elections officials were told of any.
Rose won Robeson County by about 10,000 votes, which essentially sealed his victory in a close race. But that was expected, Revels said.
Of Robeson's 55,000 registered voters, only 4,612 are Republicans.
Revels said more people came out to vote this year than in 1992 because of a hotly contested sheriff's race.
``This is what he doesn't understand: People didn't go to the polls for him,'' Revels said.
But Anderson doesn't buy that explanation.
If it's true, he says, why did turnout increase in the part of the county covered by the 7th House District but decrease in the part represented by the 8th House District? Both sections vote in the same sheriff's race.
Revels said she couldn't explain the difference.
KEYWORDS: ELECTION RESULTS CONGRESSIONAL RACE
by CNB