LUMBERTON — The Election Board will hear nine voter challenges during a hearing next week after a probable cause hearing on Monday addressed 44 challenges filed in Precinct 5 and in Pembroke.

According to state law, the hearing must be on the day of the Election Board canvas, a process to verify the validity of absentee, early vote, and provisional ballots. So on Tuesday at 10 a.m., the candidates who have filed challenges must show conclusive evidence that the nine voters deemed questionable are ineligible to vote.

Last week the board moved to hear all challenges filed up until Monday at 4:30 p.m. at the one meeting. By that deadline, Patricia McRae, who is challenging incumbent John Cantey for the Precinct 5 seat on City Council, filed 13 challenges; Pembroke Councilman Allen Dial filed one challenge in Pembroke; and Pembroke Councilman Larry Brooks filed 30 challenges in Pembroke.

The board dismissed 35 challenges because they were filed against registered voters who had not voted.

Elections Board Chairman Joshua Malcolm explained to an audience of about 20 people that a pre-election voter challenge can happen no earlier than 25 days before the election — in this case, Oct. 9 — and can only challenge a voter who has cast a ballot.

Dismissed challenges can be refiled if those voters cast ballots on Election Day.

Judges at the polling sites will have a list of registered voters; the challenged names will be marked as such, and those voters will be given provisional ballots. During the Election Board canvas, officials will verify residences of provisional ballots, which are considered suspect, and the ballots that cannot be verified will be disregarded.

Only three of McRae’s 13 challenges were initially moved to the second hearing. Robeson County Board of Elections records showed that three people had already voted as of the end of early voting, Saturday at 1 p.m., but McRae said she had evidence that three more had voted.

McRae provided a signed statement from the Lumberton Housing Authority that three people who registered at an address in public housing were not on the lease there. Dock Locklear, director of the Board of Elections, had documents from the challenged voters: Two documents were signed statements asserting residency, and one was a change of address form to the address in question.

That evidence will be assessed in the Nov. 10 hearing.

McRae successfully argued that three other people had voted with questionable addresses.

She presented a notarized letter from a resident that said the person registered to vote at her address did not live there, and Board of Elections records showed that the person had voted. The letter claimed that Cantey was registering to vote visitors in people’s homes.

A manager for the Lumberton Housing Authority said under oath that the registered voter does not live at the housing project. She also verified that two other voters who had cast ballots were registered at the address, but were not on the lease for that housing project address.

McRae and Cantey are competing for 1,655 votes — almost 600 of which have already been cast.

Malcolm took a different approach to decide whether Dial’s challenge was valid.

After the Election Board determined the challenged voter had cast a ballot, Malcolm called the number on her registration. When she returned his call, he asked if she lived at the address, and she confirmed what Dial had claimed: She lived outside of Pembroke, but voted because an absentee ballot was sent to her.

The challenge was moved to the Nov. 10 hearing.

Of Brooks’ 30 challenges, two were passed along to next week’s hearing for potentially invalid addresses in Pembroke’s housing projects. But he also presented a possibly bigger problem.

He said that after mailing campaign materials to 140 addresses on a list of registered voters, nearly 100 of them were returned as undeliverable. After investigating, he said he found that in many cases the address didn’t exist or the address listed was vacant.

“It appears people took names and registered them under fictitious addresses,” Brooks said.

Locklear confirmed that as of Monday, the Board of Elections had 91 verification letters returned from Pembroke as undeliverable.

Once a voter registers, the Board of Elections sends a verification letter to the address provided. If the letter is returned as undeliverable, a second letter is sent. If the second letter returns, the voter is moved to inactive status, and voters must prove their address to become active again.

“We wouldn’t get it back if the box or address was valid,” Locklear said.

Locklear said that the 91 people whose verification letters were returned are not on the list of registered voters, so they have to vote on provisional ballots.

Provisional ballots are not included in the preliminary count that is released at the end of Election Day. If they are legitimate, they are included in the final count sent to the state after the local canvas.

“There’s a system of checks and balances in place,” said Steve Stone, an Election Board member. “People will take it to the line and sometimes they’ll cross it, but they’ll get caught.”