News-Record.com

With all the partisan wrangling over now-reinstated tax director Jenks Crayton, some Scoop readers might have forgotten that a legal dispute for a Guilford County commissioners seat remains unresolved.

Enter the state Board of Elections, which will consider Republican incumbent Trudy Wade's appeal of a recount recently completed by the Guilford County elections board. The meeting is scheduled for May 31.

Wade gained ground last month when the Guilford board threw out hundreds of provisional ballots deemed to be cast in the wrong precinct, but she still trails Democratic challenger John Parks by 89 votes. The 6 1/2-month-old standoff has entered the commissioners' chambers, where more than a dozen speakers during the past two board meetings have either offered Wade support or told her to give it up.

In her appeal, Wade asks the state board to throw out an additional 307 provisional ballots that were "erroneously allowed to be counted" by the Guilford board, which has two Democrats and one Republican. The appeal also requests another recount or a new election.

The battle won't end at the state board; a superior court judge will examine the recount results. Wade's attorney has indicated that the case could return to the state Supreme Court, which declared out-of-precinct ballots illegal after the November 2004 election.