We won’t know who controls the Mecklenburg County Commission until every last vote is counted, including some 1,300 provisional ballots, and that will take days.

In the meanwhile a couple little factums to chew on: Dem commission candidates tallied 224,184 votes to 220,776 for GOP candidates, a gap primarily due to Jennifer Roberts getting a little daylight between herself and the rest of the pack.

Jim Puckett was the top vote getter in large chunks of the county, especially the Northern and Southern tips. Yet he finds himself sitting 5th in a six-way race. Weird.

Quick, name Parks Helms’ best district in the county? If you said the Republican stronghold of the 5th, you win a cookie. Parks tallied over 14,300 votes there, his best showing in any district by almost a 1,000 votes. By comparison, the GOP slate each got about 20,000 votes each there. Helms keeps getting elected because he does not run really poorly in any part of the county.