(The Center Square) – Sen. Phil Berger on Friday filed a request for sample hand-to-eye recount in his election race with Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, trying to keep hopes alive for a 14th term in the North Carolina General Assembly.
The two men from the Rockingham community of Eden were separated by two votes on primary Election Night in the Senate District 26 race. At canvass it was 23, and Thursday after the recount it remained at 23 with just a minimal change.
The State Board of Elections says, “The sample will be drawn at random by State Board staff for contests in the State Board’s jurisdiction. If a hand-to-eye recount is necessary, it would begin within two business days of the request for it.
“The sample hand-to-eye recount is designed to determine whether there are sufficient discrepancies from the machine recount to require a full hand-to-eye recount of all ballots cast in the contest.”
In his Friday letter to the state board, the Senate president pro tempore wrote in part, “In such a close election, we must be certain that every lawful vote is counted. The machines did not count 222 ballots that were labeled as overvotes or undervotes. Those uncounted ballots, which could include discernible votes for candidates, are nearly 10 times the margin in this contest. If the machines have misread just a fraction of those ballots, then the current results of the election could be incorrect.”
Berger, as he did on the initial recount request earlier this week, requested all ballots for hand-to-eye recount. At a minimum, he requested, all ballots deemed overvotes or undervotes are asked to be counted hand-to-eye.
An example of an overvote, the state board says, is when a ballot has two choices in a “Vote for One” contest. An undervote would be when the number of choices is less than the maximum number allowed.
The official numbers, following canvass and recount, are Page 13,135 and Berger 13,112. Before the recount, the difference was 13,136-13,113.
Historically, recounts in the state seldom overturn Election Day results. The recount process is separate of four protests by Berger, the chamber leader since the historic 2010 midterms.
In those, Berger says eight registered voters in Guilford County should have been eligible to vote in the District 26 primary but a “ballot-style error” prevented them; and three administrative errors were in Rockingham County. One involves processing a residency change from Guilford to Rockingham County; another involves party affiliation change on Feb. 6 from Democrat to unaffiliated; and three unaffiliated registrants requested Democratic ballots, started to vote, then switched to requests for Republican ballots that were tallied among provisionals.
Page was fifth in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor in 2024. He’s been sheriff in Rockingham County since 1998.
Each is aligned with second-term Republican President Donald Trump on policy. However, Berger and Page clashed on a proposal that could have landed a casino in their home county. Berger was for it, Page against. Berger eventually stopped pursuit of the project.
