The Clay Aiken Voter Registration Hearing

For today's blog post, I thought I'd tell an old war story about one on North Carolina's favorite sons, Clay Aiken.

It was the fall of 2009, and we had just had several bitterly contested Wake County school board elections which resulted in a Republican majority on that board. Mr. Aiken posted his displeasure with the results on his blog. The Republican party did some investigating, and discovered that Mr. Aiken was registered to vote at his mother's house in Wake County, even though he had just built a $2 million+ house in Chatham County.

A challenge to Mr. Aiken's residency in Wake County for voting purposes was properly brought, and we scheduled a hearing. Five minutes before the hearing started, the Wake BOE staff received a faxed notice of withdrawal of Wake County registration from Mr. Aiken. I thought that that should render the hearing moot, but the challenger was insistent on going forward, the media were present, and the county attorney recommended that we proceed with the hearing.

So we did. The main piece of evidence against Mr. Aiken was a five minute interview he had given to a local TV station, walking the reporter through his Chatham County mansion, showing off the kitchen where he fixed meals for friends, pointing to his bedroom door, and playing with his dog, who was romping through the house. It was clearly his residence, and I could barely keep a smile off my face as I watched the video.

So after that, our board deliberated briefly, found that Mr. Aiken was not a resident of Wake County, and directed that the staff remove his name from the rolls (which would have been done anyway, based on the notice he faxed in a few minutes before the hearing started).

We decided not to refer the matter to the District Attorney for prosecution, but saw it as a teachable moment: you can only vote in the precinct in which you are registered, not yo mama's.