This article was originally published by the Asheville Watchdog.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections is investigating Asheville Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley, who has claimed a primary-residence tax break in Atlanta while serving on Asheville’s City Council and has a history of voting in both Georgia and North Carolina.
“We have logged an incident regarding Ms. Mosley’s residency and are looking into it,” Jason Tyson, the board’s director of external affairs, wrote in an email. “Can confirm that we are investigating it, but we won’t be able to comment further on the extent of the investigation itself.”
The board investigates “potential election law violations and refers cases to prosecutors when warranted based on the findings.” Complaints come from a variety of sources, including political parties, candidates and private citizens, and can include “matters associated with unlawful voting activity” and voter registration fraud, according to the board’s website.
Mosley has received primary-residence tax benefits on a home in Atlanta throughout her five years on the City Council while also submitting election documents showing she lives in Asheville, a requirement of the office, Asheville Watchdog reported last week.
On Friday, Mosley contacted the Fulton County Assessor’s Office and requested the homestead exemption on her Atlanta property be removed as of 2018, said Florence Brooks, the exemption manager. Only owner-occupied residences are eligible for the exemption, which saved Mosley more than $19,000 from 2018 through 2025.
Brooks said Mosley will have to repay the back taxes. Falsely claiming a homestead exemption is a crime in Georgia, but Brooks said “they’ll only look at it as a crime if she’s claiming [the exemption] somewhere else.” North Carolina does not have a homestead exemption.
Mosley voted 14 times in Georgia and four times in North Carolina from 2008 through 2014, including two primaries in the same year with presidential candidates on the ballot – the March 2012 Republican primary in Georgia and the May 2012 Democratic primary in Buncombe County, voting records show. NC Local originally reported Mosley’s history of voting in both states.
Mosley, who lived in Georgia for more than a decade, did not respond to The Watchdog’s request for a comment about the investigation. Her lawyer, Gene Ellison, said there’s no “proof that she registered, that she voted in two states.”
He also questioned the timing of press inquiries into her voting days before the county’s political candidate filing deadline of Dec. 19. “Go fishing somewhere else, young man,” he told a Watchdog reporter.
It is not a crime to simultaneously be registered in two states, elections experts say, but violations of the “voting more than once” provision of federal voting law carry fines of up to $10,000 and/or imprisonment of up to 5 years.
It is also a felony under state law to vote “at more than one precinct or more than one time … in the same primary or election.”
Proving violations of these statutes is difficult, elections experts say. Mosley, in an interview last week, acknowledged that she had voted in both states but adamantly refuted that she “double voted,” as the practice of voting twice in the same election is commonly called.
“No. Never,” Mosley said. “Emphatically, never.”
Tyson could not confirm that potential double voting was the subject of the “incident” logged by the board. But he did say any investigation involving allegations of voting across state lines would be referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Tyson said Tuesday that board investigators are still reviewing the information on Mosley.
“Hypothetically, any incident of alleged double voting in multiple states in the same elections would be referred to federal investigators,” Tyson said in an email. “We would share any evidence collected from North Carolina and work with them.”
While the state law on voting more than once in the same election does not include language about voting in another state, “obviously, a different state is a different precinct,” he said in an earlier interview. But because of the limits of the state law’s language, “I think from us, from a jurisdictional standpoint … the statute probably ends at the state line, and that’s where the federal law would come into play.”
A tax break in Georgia since 2002
Mosley has claimed a primary-residency tax break on her home in Georgia since 2002, while listing another address as a registered voter and candidate in Asheville. She acknowledged last week that she does not live in the Kenilworth home listed as her address in Buncombe voting records, 3 Devonshire Place, but temporarily rents an apartment, partly because of concerns about her safety as a public official.
Voting records in Georgia show her voter registration was canceled in 2014 because she moved out of state. Six years later, she applied for a vacancy on the Asheville City Council, listing the Devonshire house as her voting address, and was appointed. She successfully ran for reelection in 2022 and on Monday filed to run next year for city council using the Devonshire address, according to the candidates’ list on the county board of elections website.
The North Carolina election board’s website shows that questions about residency and eligibility as a voter and candidate are referred to county boards of elections. Buncombe County spokesperson Kassi Day wrote in an email to The Watchdog on Monday that the county had not received any challenges “that the elections services director is aware of at this time.”
Elections experts said that the law regarding double voting is notoriously murky and is particularly difficult to prove when it involves more than one state.
“It is not always clear when double voting has happened across state lines, given the variation among states’ policies,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures website, in part because state laws vary so much “regarding the definition of ‘voting more than once’ and particularly what happens if a voter casts a ballot in more than one state.
“States commonly prohibit voting more than once ‘in the same election,’ but this can be interpreted in different ways,” the NCSL webpage says. “Is voting in more than one state on the same day voting in the ‘same election?’ Or is each state-run election a separate election? What if voting occurred on different days – that is, a voter cast an absentee ballot in one state and voted in person in another state on Election Day?
“Since the U.S. has a very mobile population and voters rarely inform elections officials when they move, voters can often be on the voter rolls in two (or more) states at one time,” the organization also says, and “voter registration in multiple states is not itself a crime, and thus no one can be prosecuted for simply having two open voter registrations in different jurisdictions.”
Mack McKeller, the Brevard city attorney who advises elected officials on voting law, also said the rules regarding double voting are unclear.
Georgia election law does not require that voters live in the state for a specific period of time before casting a ballot. North Carolina requires voters live in the district where they vote at least 30 days before the election.
Nothing in those time frames would have necessarily blocked Mosley from voting in the two states in 2012, McKeller said. “Theoretically, you could qualify for both.”
“Is it, on its face, automatically voting twice in the same election? I can’t tell,” he said of Mosley’s 2012 votes. “I don’t know what the short answer is because, technically, it’s a separate election.”
Robert Joyce, a professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s School of Government, singled out a phrase in the state law about double voting – one stating it is a felony “to vote illegally in any primary or election” – as especially confounding.
“What it says, pared down and leaving out extraneous stuff, is it’s a felony to vote illegally. That’s kind of a tautology. It doesn’t tell you what voting illegally is,” he said.
The North Carolina elections board website states, “Not every investigation leads to a referral for prosecution. Cases may not be referred if the investigation shows that no violation has occurred, insufficient evidence to prove a violation or there is evidence of error or lack of intent.”
The board can also issue written warnings that include “educational information and best practices relevant to the election laws in question,” the website says.
Mosley, in an interview last week, said that although her voting record shows she cast a ballot in the 2012 Georgia Republican primary, she has “never, never, never” been a Republican or endorsed any Republican candidate. Georgia does not register voters by party and allows them to cast ballots in the primary race of their choosing.
Mosley, 56 and an Asheville native, attended law school in Atlanta and then worked at a law firm in the city for several years, she said in an interview earlier this year. She said she regularly visited Asheville, and returned full-time in 2016 to care for her ailing father.
Mosley says she lives in Asheville ‘90 percent of the time’
Mosley said last week that she contracts with a law firm in Atlanta but her work is “100 percent remote” and she lives in Asheville “90 percent of the time.”
Online tax records going back to 2018 show Mosley received a $30,000 exemption on the Atlanta property that year and floating exemptions in subsequent years that are meant to protect homeowners from steep increases in taxable value caused by appreciation and housing market swings. Only primary residences are eligible for such exemptions.
Once granted, homestead exemptions automatically renew each year, according to the Fulton County tax assessor’s site, “as long as the homeowner continually occupies the property under the same ownership.”
Mosley said that the payments on the house she bought in 2001, including insurance premiums and taxes, are handled by a mortgage company. If she was aware she was receiving the exemption at that time, she added, “I have not thought about it since 2001, at least.”
A Dec. 12 NC Local story linked to documents submitted to the tax assessor’s office on Mosley’s property, including one form that she signed electronically and that authorized a Georgia mortgage company to “file homestead exemption and/or appeal property taxes.”
Asked about the form, Ellison said he had “nothing to add except political hack job at filing period.”
Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper said Mosley’s voting record and the homestead exemption create at a minimum a public perception problem.
He acknowledged that dual registrations do happen, because it’s incumbent on one state’s election officials to remove the person who’s departed from the rolls, and there can be administrative lag times.
Cooper referred to the case of former Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, who was registered to vote in three states at once, including North Carolina. Governor Josh Stein, who previously served as North Carolina’s attorney general, announced in December 2022 that he would not pursue charges against Meadows, citing lack of evidence.
But critics rightly derided Meadows for his multiple registrations, Cooper said, and he expects similar criticism against Mosley.
“I think that if you are elected official, you are presumed to have your financial house in order, your voting house in order, and your public house in order,” Cooper said. “And anytime it’s not, you’ve got to expect that you’re going to get criticized.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Sally Kestin contributed to this report.
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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Email skestin@avlwatchdog.org. Dan DeWitt is The Watchdog’s deputy managing editor/senior reporter. Email: ddewitt@avlwatchdog.org. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
