By a 3-2 party line vote, the North Carolina State Board of Elections ordered a machine recount of 90,000 votes in Durham County as the saga of the disputed governor’s race between incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory and Attorney General Roy Cooper continues:
Republicans initially wanted the Durham ballots recounted by hand, although they later said a machine recount would be sufficient. The Durham County Board of Elections, which like all county election boards is controlled by Republicans, had rejected the request, saying there was no evidence of irregularities or misconduct.
The two Democrats on the State Board of Elections said overturning Durham’s decision was a mistake and sets a bad precedent for future election complaints.
“I think it’s a travesty that we’re going to interpret what happened in Durham County as an irregularity,” said board member Joshua Malcolm of Lumberton, who opposed the recount. “Anyone who looked at the data (showing a McCrory lead early on election night) knew that all the votes in Durham County were not in yet.”
The delay came because election workers entered information from ballot tabulators’ paper tapes after they were unable to read data from six memory cards that also came from the tabulators.
Regarding precedent, hopefully there will not be another instance of a late vote tally causing one candidate to surge ahead of the other at such a late hour after reported problems counting the votes. As for whether not this will bring the saga to a close, McCrory has said he will drop the request for a statewide recount in exchange for a recount in Durham. As for the NCGOP:
….executive director Dallas Woodhouse praised the board’s decision. “Today is a great day for democracy in North Carolina,” he told reporters after the meeting. “We believe this will help us to conclude the process in a very short amount of time. The voters of North Carolina now have an opportunity to have full and complete confidence in the results that came out of Durham County.”
Let’s hope the results that come out of Durham are accepted by all parties involved so the the state can move on.