(The Center Square) – Four protests are pending, and Friday begins with the General Assembly’s powerful top senator yet to concede his District 26 upset loss to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.
Initial recounts in Rockingham and Guilford counties, completed Thursday, had minimal change and no net impact – Page still leads by 23 votes. The deadline is 5 p.m. Friday for 13th term Sen. Phil Berger, president pro tempore since the historic 2010 midterms, for a hand-to-eye recount request.
Observers are also watching for litigation.
The official numbers, following canvass and recount, are Page 13,135 and Berger 13,112. At less than 1% difference, Berger’s options remain open and the hand-to-eye is next option available.
Before the recount, the difference was 13,136-13,113.
If Berger, as expected pursues the next step, election officials would randomly select 3% of the more than 26,000 ballots cast and individually examine the marks.
The State Board of Elections says, “If the results of the sample hand-to-eye recount among the randomly selected voting sites differ from the machine recount, such 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 reversing the results, the State Board would order a full hand-to-eye recount of all ballots in that contest.”
Historically, recounts in the state seldom overturn Election Day results.
In his four protests, 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 – he and Berger are each from the community of Eden – 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.
