A candidate for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board was charged with two felonies months after filing for candidacy. But there won’t be a trial until after the election.
For this week’s Carolina Curious, WFDD’s Amy Diaz looks into how the State Board of Elections handles issues like this regarding candidates with felony charges.
Under North Carolina law, everyone running for office has to disclose whether they’ve ever been convicted, meaning found guilty, of a felony.
But pending felony charges, where the case hasn’t been decided yet, don’t need to be disclosed at all. That’s according to Jason Tyson with the State Board of Elections.
“If you're charged, but you're not convicted of a felony, that doesn't really have any legal impact on your candidacy or your voter registration status," Tyson said. "It would just be an issue for, you know, the voters could consider it, obviously, rather than an eligibility issue.”
And a felony conviction wouldn’t disqualify someone from running for most offices either. That is, as long as they’ve served their sentence, had their rights restored and disclosed the felony when filing for candidacy.
That’s not the case everywhere in the country, though. In some states, the right to hold public office after a felony conviction is only restored through a pardon or expungement. And sometimes it depends on the crime.
In Minnesota and Illinois, for example, there are specific disqualifications for convictions related to bribery and election fraud, respectively.
In other states, there’s a waiting period like in Nevada, where a person isn’t eligible to hold office until four years after completing their sentence.
There is one exception in North Carolina, though, as of 2021.
“If the candidate is running for sheriff, they are strictly disqualified if they've ever been convicted of a felony, even if it was expunged," Tyson said.
Officials can be removed from office if they’re convicted of a felony after being elected.
North Carolina law states that you have to be able to vote for an office in order to hold it — that’s a right you lose during your felony sentence.