Sheriff Sam Page is holding a two-vote lead in a contentious Republican primary contest for N.C. Senate District 26, but the election is not over yet.
With 13,077 votes to incumbent Phil Berger's 13,075, Page is up in the district that covers all of Rockingham County and much of the rural part of Guilford County. If the result holds, it would be a seismic upset in North Carolina politics, with a politician widely regarded as the state's most powerful over the last 15 years losing to the popular local sheriff of his home county.
The process of finalizing the election's result will include counting provisional and absentee ballots; waiting for ballots mailed from military and overseas voters; a canvass by elections officials; and, almost certainly, a recount.
"There is more work to do, and more ballots to count. No election ends on Election Day. This is by design — by state and federal law — to ensure that election results are accurate and that all ballots cast lawfully by eligible voters are counted," N.C. State Board of Elections officials wrote in a press release.
Here's what the coming days could hold in N.C. Senate District 26, and some dates to keep in mind.
Wednesday afternoon, the State Board of Elections said there were 137 provisional ballots cast in Rockingham County and 242 in Guilford County.
This gives some insight into Rockingham County, where the entire county is in Senate District 26, but maybe not as much in Guilford County, where it is one of three senate districts.
Voters who need to cure an issue with an absentee or provisional ballot must do so by Friday at noon. Those include issues with photo identification, where a voter did not have an acceptable photo ID or, in the case of an absentee ballot, did not sign their ballot application.
County boards of elections will meet Friday — at 2 p.m. in Guilford County, 3 p.m. in Rockingham County — to decide whether the absentee ballots with issues or provisional ballots should be counted in the election.
Local board of elections staff review the reason why a ballot is provisional and decide whether it should be counted. For example, if a voter is not registered, county staff review whether there was an attempt to register by the voter. The ballot is held in a sealed envelope until the board determines whether it should be counted.
If the board determines it should count, the ballot is then opened and the votes tallied.
Interested parties can challenge absentee ballots until 5 p.m. on March 10. Those challenges will be considered at the canvass meeting.
County boards can also challenge ballots if it determines a voter cast a ballot and then died before Election Day or cast a ballot and was convicted of a felony before Election Day. Those challenges will also be tallied at the canvass.
Each canvass across the state will hold its canvass meeting at 11 a.m. on Friday, March 13. These meetings are held to certify election results and are open to the public.
If a candidate is trailing by more than 1% of the total votes cast in that election, they can request a recount. This seems likely in the Senate District 26 race.
That candidate needs to request that recount in writing by noon on Tuesday, March 17, in state legislative districts that span multiple counties like Senate District 26. (There is an earlier deadline of 5 p.m. on Monday, March 16 for contests that are under the jurisdiction of county boards of elections.)
Should a recount be requested, it would take place during an open meeting, according to the State Board of Elections, which would give local counties directions to follow while conducting the process.
The counties would use a machine to recount all ballots, according to the state board, while a sample of precincts would be recounted in a hand-to-eye recount, which could lead to a hand-to-eye recount of every ballot in the contest if there are discrepancies.
County recounts must be finalized before the state canvass on March 25.
Page, for his part, is declaring victory and predicting that any outstanding ballots will favor his candidacy.
"We won. We've still got some votes to be counted, but you know what? We won, we're ahead and I'm very confident we will win this and move forward," Page told WRAL.
Berger, trailing by a razor-thin margin, struck a more cautious tone in his remarks to reporters late Tuesday evening.
"We've got to make sure that every legal vote gets counted, and I look forward to moving through that process. In the next days and weeks, we will see how the outcome turns out," Berger told reporters late Tuesday evening.
