Shortly before Tuesday's noon deadline, Senate leader Phil Berger requested a recount in the Senate District 26 Republican primary that he is losing to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.
If results hold, the election will shift the balance of power in the North Carolina General Assembly. Berger has led the Senate's Republicans since they took power of the chamber in 2011.
"Today, Sen. Berger contacted the N.C. State Board of Elections and formally requested a machine recount of the votes in SD-26. We will have no further statement today regarding the potential for requesting a hand recount," Jonathan Felts, a Berger spokesman, wrote in a statement Tuesday.
In his request for the recount, Berger wrote that there is 1 overvote and 134 undervotes in Rockingham County and 2 overvotes and 83 undervotes in Guilford County.
"These overvotes and undervotes could very likely determine the outcome of the race," Berger wrote in his request.
Berger asked that any ballot the machine identifies as either having too many bubbles filled or not enough bubbles filled be hand-checked by a bipartisan team of four Board of Elections members to determine who the voter chose.
"By counting the overvotes and undervotes by hand during the first machine recount process, the candidates and the public can have confidence in the accuracy of the vote count in this very close race without the need to conduct a full hand-to-eye recount of all votes cast," Berger wrote.
Recount process
Guilford County's recount will begin at 1 p.m. Tuesday. Rockingham County's will take place Thursday at 10 a.m.
In an initial recount, county boards put all ballots through a tabulator by bipartisan, two-member teams. If any ballots are rejected by the tabulator, four-person bipartisan teams are required to review them.
The trailing candidate has 24 hours after the machine recount to request a hand recount of a sample of 3% of precincts and/or early voting sites. That would begin within two business days of when it is requested.
If that partial hand recount has significant differences from the machine recount, it could lead to a hand recount of every ballot in the election.
There is also still the potential for the Berger campaign to file an election protest. The deadline for that is 5 p.m. Tuesday.
A protest would likely focus on Guilford County, where the Berger campaign says it has learned that some Senate District 26 voters did not have the election on their ballots.
The Page campaign believes that everyone received the correct ballot and alleges that the Berger campaign is cold-calling large numbers of voters and encouraging them to sign sworn statements that could be false.
"Voters should never feel pressured by a defeated candidate to say something that isn’t true," Patrick Sebastian, a post-election advisor for the Page campaign, said in a statement Monday evening.
