News-Record.com

Although a lot of the local (Guilford County) commentary has was generally positive toward the result, there were some folks unhappy with the results and how the election was conducted.

The new story, the one that we haven't written, is that some of those unhappy folks are apparently unhappy enough to have filed a challenge to the election results with the national NAACP headquarters. (Except in very broad terms, I'm not going to talk about the substance of the complaint or name names here. If that information isn't fit for print, it really isn't fit for me to publish in another form.)

Now, if this were a regular political election, this story would have hit the paper and online before the ink was dry on the form. Elections filings and protests and such are open records. Paper trails are wonderful things.

At the NAACP, that's not so much the case. The NAACP is private group and doesn't have to respond to a demand for records from little ol' me, or anyone else without subpoena power.

And, in fact, I was told in not so subtle terms by folks at both the state and national levels that I had no reason to be interested in an election protest - if there were in fact one - since it was a private matter for the group. Others at the national level (in their communications department by the way) simply didn't return phone calls.

That left me with a quandary. Having reported the results of the election very prominently in the paper, if those results were in jeopardy of changing I ought to report that. And after having talked to a very nice lady who said she filed the protest, and having a copy of what she said with the protest in hand, you'd figure I'd have a story, right?

But here's the thing: I couldn't find anyone to corroborate the story, to say that yes, they too had signed onto the protest. That would have been a moot point if the national office had just said, "Yes, we have a properly filed protest in hand."

Instead, I was off looking for others (at least one other) to back up the story. What I found were people very nervous about talking to a reporter about what they said was an internal matter. A couple folks I called who I was pretty sure had something to do with the protest (one of them was cited in the document) told me that they didn't want to have anything to do with it. One cried on the phone, pleading with me not to publish her name.

Others, who were willing to say that yes, they believed there was a protest in the works, didn't have (or own up to) first hand knowledge of the effort.

And, of course, those accused as having done something wrong (essentially manipulating the youth delegates to vote one way) denied it.

As for Alston, he said again last week that he accepted the results and was not part of any protest of the results. He truly sounded as if he was ready for the election to be over with.

Folks, that isn't enough to put in the paper. We were close to having a story, but not all the way there.

What I can say is that there are some folks who are unhappy with the results and unhappy with the way the election was conducted. Some of those people may have gone as far as filing a protest with the NAACP's national office. Whether the national office will act on the complaint or simply kill it is not at all clear to me.

The only reason for me to think protest has a slim measure of working is that more people weren't willing to talk about it. Generally, if folks think they holding a winning hand, they’re a little more willing to talk. Those who believe their dancing on the edge tend to clam up a bit.