The recount results are in, and U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre of Lumberton will be going back to Congress for another two-year term in the U.S. House. In political terms, Democrat McIntyre won an uphill fight for re-election to a 7th District seat that had been remapped by Republican state legislators to virtually ensure his defeat. There was an equally big winner in the Nov. 6 election, however, and that is North Carolina’s election system.

Republican challenger David Rouzer of Benson had called for the recount, as was his right, after a post-election tally found McIntyre leading by 655 votes out of nearly 337,000 cast in the Eastern N.C. district. The recount, which involved rerunning the voting machine results (rather than a more-intensive and expensive “hand-eye” ballot count, which Rouzer said he would not seek), changed the outcome by precisely one vote. Rouzer picked it up.

Coupled with a general absence of election-fraud complaints stemming from voting statewide, the recount results give citizens good reason to trust that elections here – if not the campaign ads preceding them – are accurate and honest.