The Durham County Board of Elections has done its best to be transparent regarding the 90,000 votes that put (presumptive) Gov.-elect Roy Cooper over the top in his bid against incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory.
Media outlets have reported the board’s blow-by-blow report of what went down on Election Day. The statement is indeed very detailed. Here’s the key pull quote:
At 10:00pm, when all but a small number of election day results had been received and uploaded to the State’s system, the Durham County Board of Elections bi-partisan team began the manual data entry and upload process for precinct 29 and the five early one stop voting sites whose PCMCIA cards had failed. The process began at this time at the direction of the State Board of Elections staff representative who was present. The bi-partisan team was made up of one Democrat and one Republican member of the Durham County Board of Elections and the interim Director of Elections for Durham County. The data entry process took place in the main board room under the supervision of the State Board of Elections staff representative, the Chairman of the Durham County Board of Elections and an Assistant Durham County Attorney. Various other observers also were present. The data entry process took approximately an hour and a half because there was data reflecting 94,159 votes that had to be manually entered and uploaded into the state’s computer system. When the data entry process was completed, an interim report showing the data that had been entered was run, and a spot check comparison of the data shown on that report and the data shown the result tapes for each of the tabulators in question was conducted by the State Board of Elections staff representative, a member of the Durham County Board of Elections staff, and the Chairman of the Durham County Board of Elections.
There is the issue of ‘tired hands and bleary eyes,’ although Bill Brian, chair of the Durham County Board of Elections, has countered “the total would have been the same whether it came in at 7 p.m. or it came in at midnight.” That indeed may turn out to be true, but it’s worth getting making sure the vote total is a hundred precent accurate.
