Several North Carolina county boards of elections will not complete their election canvass meetings on Friday and will resume their work to certify 2024 general election results on Monday.
Most of the 100 county boards completed their canvasses on Friday. However, it is not unusual for a small number of the bipartisan boards of elections to need more time, given the extensive amount of work that must be done after Election Day to certify an election. More than 5.7 million ballots were cast in this election, the largest number of ballots ever cast in North Carolina, which increases the work though the canvass period remains the same amount of time as any other election.
“The primary purpose of canvass is to ensure that the ballots of eligible voters are counted and those of ineligible individuals are not, that the county board followed all laws in the election and post-election processes, and that the certified results are accurate, no matter how long the process takes,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “The State Board will continue to support these county boards as they work through the process.”
The public can monitor progress on the canvass at the State Board's Election Results Map.
Reasons cited by counties that did not finalize the election on Friday varied by county and included the following:
- Board staff needed more time to determine eligibility of provisional voters and present findings to the county board for consideration.
- The county board needed to locate and remove ballots from the count when there was a successful challenge to a ballot because the voter died between the time they cast their ballot during early voting and Election Day. Voter eligibility is determined as of Election Day in North Carolina.
- The county board needed to locate and remove ballots when an address verification mailing sent to a voter who registered and voted during the early voting period was returned to the county board as undeliverable. Under a new state law, if by the second day before county canvass, the U.S. Postal Service returns an address verification notice to the county board as undeliverable to the address the registrant put on their voter registration application, the county board must retrieve the voter’s ballot and remove it from the count, unless the voter provides documentation proving their residence address.
The following county boards of elections will resume their canvass meetings next week:
- Chatham County: The county board will reconvene at 1 p.m. Monday.
- Craven County: The county board will reconvene at 2 p.m. Monday.
- Cumberland County: The county board will reconvene at 4 p.m. Monday.
- Forsyth County: The county board will reconvene at 2 p.m. Monday.
- Randolph County: The county board will reconvene at a time to be determined.
- Yancey County: The county board will reconvene Monday at a time to be determined.
Additional county boards were still working into the evening Friday, so it was unclear if they would finalize their elections or have to resume early next week.
Possible recounts
The delay in some counties’ canvasses does not affect the timing for any recount requests.
For statewide contests, the vote difference must be 10,000 votes or fewer for a second-place candidate to demand a recount. For non-statewide contests, the difference between the candidates must be 1 percent or less of the total votes cast in the contest after county canvass. In contests under the jurisdiction of the State Board of Elections (including General Assembly seats in which the district lies in more than one county), the recount demand must be in writing and received by the State Board of Elections no later than noon on Tuesday, November 19.
For contests under the jurisdiction of county boards of elections, a demand for recount must be made in writing to the county board of elections by 5 p.m. Monday, November 18.
Under state law, if results change after the recount request deadline and a candidate becomes eligible to demand a recount, they would have 48 hours to request one.