Second recount in NC state Supreme Court race expected to be completed by Tuesday
A second recount of votes in the North Carolina Supreme Court election is expected to be completed early this week, according to the State Board of Elections.
By late Friday, 98 of the state’s 100 counties had completed their hand-to-eye recounts, the elections board said Saturday. Two counties, Brunswick and Currituck, are expected to complete the recounts by Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Some election board members in those counties were unavailable to complete the recounts by Friday.
In the ongoing hand-to-eye recounts, election officials physically examine a sample of ballots, rather than running them through a tabulating machine like they did in the first recount.
Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin requested the second recount after the initial recount showed Democrat Allison Riggs maintaining her lead by 734 votes.
Each candidate lost 110 votes after the machine recount, potentially due to partial or stray marks being counted differently in their second run through the machines. But the margin between the candidates remained the same.
Griffin initially led Riggs by about 10,000 votes after Election Night, but the race flipped after outstanding absentee and provisional ballots were counted.
The State Board of Elections will release the results of the second recount when all counties complete the task, the board said in a press release Saturday. The board would order a full hand-to-eye recount, in which all ballots cast across the state would be physically examined by election workers, if discrepancies between the machine recount and the hand recount could be extrapolated to reverse the current results.
The results of the second recount will come ahead of the state board hearing election protests and other motions from Griffin’s campaign, in which he is challenging the validity of more than 60,000 ballots cast across the state.
The State Board of Elections announced Sunday that it will meet Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. to consider Griffin’s protests.
On Friday, the North Carolina Democratic Party filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate Griffin’s challenge of the 60,000-plus ballots.
“We are prepared to take on Republicans,” NCDP Chair Anderson Clayton said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “They can’t stop the results of an election just because they don’t like the fact that we won.”
On Saturday, Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, thanked election workers for their efforts throughout the recounts and asked for patience as the process continues.
“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,” Brinson Bell said in a written statement.
“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,” she continued. “We respectfully ask for patience as the State Board and the county boards work through this process, ensuring accuracy and compliance with the law at every step.”
Reporter Kyle Ingram contributed.
In the Spotlight designates ongoing topics of high interest that are driven by The News & Observer’s focus on accountability reporting.
This story was originally published December 8, 2024 at 10:35 AM.
