County boards of elections in Forsyth, Guilford and Mecklenburg counties will resume recounts on Monday in the North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice contest.
These three counties do not expect to complete their recounts today (Wednesday). All three are large counties with hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in the election. All ballots must be inserted into tabulators as part of the recount.
The State Board anticipates that the statewide machine recount will be completed early next week. As of late Wednesday morning, 91 counties had finished recounting.
With those recounts complete, Republican Paul Newby led Democrat Cheri Beasley by 433 votes out of nearly 5.4 million cast. Several other counties expect to complete their recounts by the end of the day.
For 2020 election results, go here: NCSBE Contest Results.
For recount results, go here: 2020 Statewide Recount Results.
The State Board will announce final results when all counties have completed their recounts. After that, the trailing candidate, within 24 hours, may demand a hand-to-eye recount in a random sample of 3% of precincts in each county.
If the results of a hand-to-eye recount differ from the previous results within those precincts to the extent that extrapolating the amount of the change to the entire jurisdiction (based on the proportion of ballots recounted to the total votes cast for that office) would result in the reversing of the results, then a statewide hand-to-eye recount of all ballots would be conducted.
Meanwhile, both Supreme Court candidates have election protests pending that are likely to be considered by the State Board soon. No hearing date has been scheduled.
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