North Carolina – Several members of the state GOP are suing the NCGOP for actions taken at the state GOP convention in June of this year. Mike Urben, Andrea DeHaan, and Aryn Schloemer, who attended the convention, are suing the state GOP for how the election for state officeholders was conducted.
The Tribune first reported on this in June, right after the convention took place. The suit was filed in Wake County Superior Court and is a motion for a preliminary injunction. The lawsuit claims the GOP “…failed to comport with the NCGOP’s own governing documents, was defective, and resulted in the improper and illegitimate election of the now purported Chairman, Michael Whatley.”
Initial complaints by party members
The Tribune first learned of infighting in the party over the use of an electronic application called CardinalGPS employed to cast votes by delegates at the state meeting just after the convention.
Stephen Porter, a professor in the College of Education at North Carolina State University and a conservative Republican, in a post on his blog, claims “The managing director of CardinalGPS is Amy Mulligan, and her mother Karyn Mulligan was running for the vice chair position in the election (some have reported that Amy Mulligan now owns CardinalGPS),”(https://stephenporter.org/so-the-nc-gop-convention-was-a-complete-shitshow-all-thanks-to-cardinalgps/).
Porter is not the only one making allegations. John Kane, who was running for the NC GOP Chairmanship against Whatley, posted a video at Rumble (https://rumble.com/v2ttp5o-ncgop-convention-update.html) in which he asked for several items from the winner of the state party chairmanship, Michael Whatley. Among the items on Kane wants are the source codes that were used during the voting at the convention.
The matter gets stranger. In a June 15, 2023, post by Brant Clifton on the dailyhaymaker.com, a conservative blog page, in his post “Even MORE NCGOP voting app questions,” Clifton states, “Initially, the only entity named on the app’s landing page was Relyus, a Fayetteville-area printing company which has been the NCGOP’s largest subcontractor. According to records, Relyus did about $3.4 million in business with the NCGOP from 2020–2022.”
However, he goes on to state, “About the time of that discussion, the voting app’s landing page was changed” to include “Powered by CardinalGPS Technology.” Clifton also asserts that CardinalGPS had been dissolved by the time of the GOP State Convention this month, a fact confirmed by the Tribune.
Clifton then asks in his post, “So, who got paid to develop and manage this application for the convention? How much did the party pay for this technology? If it is no longer a registered corporation, the payment had to be made out to a person d/b/a “CardinalGPS.” Who was that person?”
Some delegates never got credentialed to vote
The Tribune also spoke with Bill Robinson, a regular freelance contributor to Newsmax.com, and a conservative Republican living in Asheville, who said he was supposed to have been a credentialed delegate to the convention.
Robinson said that after he got his press credential, he went to get his delegate credential. “I made the mistake of wearing my press credential,” he said. That’s when he started getting a hard time. He was sent to another man who said,”‘I’ll check on it later,’ and I said, “Wait a minute, we’re voting this afternoon,” Robinson told the Tribune.
The man told him to come back at about 1:30 pm. At which time, Robinson did, only to be told to return at 1:45 pm, then 3 pm, while the voting was supposed to start at 2 pm. He said about 100 other people were also there trying to get credentialed to vote.
“I thought I smelled a rat,” said Robinson, who decided to ask some of the people waiting to be credentialed who they were supporting for state party chairman. He said the ones he asked supported John Kane, the opponent of the current chairman, Michael Whatley. Meanwhile, the man who had told him to come back had gone off and never came back. Robinson said he was kicked out because he was never credentialed as a delegate. Robinson, a longtime politically active person, said he’d never seen anything like it.
Tribune put questions to the NC GOP
The Tribune also wanted some answers, so we asked the NC GOP the following questions in an email:
How was CardinalGPS chosen as the developer of the app used by the NC GOP?
How much was CardinalGPS paid for the app?
Who was the NC GOP contact person at CardinalGPS?
If CardinalGPS was dissolved at the end of February, as the NC SOS website indicates, who was paid for the app, and who was tech support during the convention?
Last, what is the NC GOP’s rebuttal to all the criticism it is receiving over the use of CardinalGPS’s app?
Editor’s Note: The NC GOP has yet to respond at time of press.