NORTH CAROLINA STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS
By the afternoon of Dec. 8, 98 of the 100 county boards of elections had completed their hand-to-eye recounts in the NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Seat 6 contest.
Two counties — Brunswick and Currituck — are expected to complete their recounts Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Both county boards reported issues with board member availability that left them unable to complete their hand recounts this week.
The State Board is compiling the partial hand recount results from the county boards and will release the results once all counties have completed their recounts.
Republican candidate Jefferson G. Griffin requested the partial hand-to-eye recount. After a statewide machine recount of all ballots cast in that contest, Griffin trailed Democratic candidate Allison Riggs by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast in that contest.
The sample hand-to-eye recount is designed to determine whether there are sufficient discrepancies from the machine recount to require a full hand-to-eye recount of all ballots cast in the contest.
If the results of the hand-to-eye recount among the randomly selected voting sites differ from the machine recount, such that extrapolating the amount of the change to the entire state (based on the proportion of ballots recounted to the total votes cast for that office) would result in reversing the results, the State Board would order a statewide hand-to-eye recount of all ballots in that contest.
Meanwhile, the State Board plans to meet at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11, in Raleigh to consider election protests and other motions filed by the Griffin campaign. The meeting notice can be found on the board’s website by clicking here.
“We applaud the county boards of elections and all of the workers who are assisting them in completing these recounts, hearing the protests from the Griffin campaign, and otherwise conducting post-election tasks,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “All of this additional work comes on the heels of an incredibly grueling few months before the presidential election, which was compounded in a quarter of the state due to Hurricane Helene. We respectfully ask for patience as the State Board and the county board work through this process, ensuring accuracy and compliance with the law at every step.”