Election officials in Dare and Currituck counties have completed their recount of ballots that could impact the outcome of the race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate, trailed Democratic candidate Allison Riggs by 625 votes following the statewide canvass completed on November 24.
For statewide contests, the vote difference must be 10,000 votes or fewer for a second-place candidate to demand a recount, which Griffin did before last Tuesday’s deadline.
Counties have to bear the cost of any recount.
According to a State Board of Elections news release, a bipartisan team of election officials in each county inserts every ballot cast in the election into a tabulator, counting only the contest or contests eligible for the recount.
Small variances are expected between the canvassed results and the recount results. Because ballots are scanned again through the tabulator, which may be a different tabulator, partial or stray marks on the ballot may be counted differently the second time. This may result in counts that are slightly different than the original count.
Some counties will use high-speed tabulators to expedite their recounts, which also may result in slight variances from the results from the smaller precinct tabulators that first counted the ballots.
Recounts are open to the public. This includes the candidates, their representatives or legal counsel, media representatives, and any other interested persons. These attendees may observe the counting process but may not observe individual ballots.
Also, the use of video or still cameras by the public inside the recount room is not permitted because of the statutory prohibition on photographing or videotaping voted ballots.
Dare County election officials conducted the recount last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the Board of Commissioners meeting room, and live streamed the process on the county’s Youtube channel.
The final numbers reported Monday by Dare County showed a two vote change in favor of Griffin, with a final tally of 13,968 to 10,191.
In Currituck, Griffin gained four votes and four over votes were eliminated, giving him a 12,663 to 4,785 advantage.
As of Monday afternoon, 70 of the state’s 100 counties have reported their results that have reduced Riggs’ margin by 69 votes.
Counties have until the end of business on Wednesday to report their recount results.
State law provides that after the initial recount by machine, the candidate with fewer votes may demand a hand recount in a random sample of Election Day precincts, early voting sites, or absentee ballots.
Such a hand recount would be conducted in a sample of precincts, drawn at random by the State Board.
If a hand count is necessary, it would begin the week of December 2.
If results of the hand-to-eye recount differ from the previous results within those precincts to the extent that extrapolating the amount of the change to the entire jurisdiction (based on the proportion of ballots recounted to the total votes cast for that office) would result in the reversing of the results, then the State Board of Elections would order a hand recount of all ballots statewide.
