Election recount Wednesday

By Scott Nicholson

nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

Though the count of provisional votes widened the gap between two close races, two Watauga candidates are eligible for recounts.

The recount for ballots for the Nov. 7 election, with respect to the county sheriff's race, N.C. state Senate District 45 and N.C. Court of Appeals, will be held Wednesday, Nov. 22, at 10 a.m. at the Agricultural Conference Center in Boone.

After the opening of 170 approved provisional ballots Friday, Democrat Len “L.D.” Hagaman expanded his lead against incumbent sheriff Mark Shook by 23 votes.

In ballots certified by the local elections board after Friday’s canvass, Hagaman received 7,845 votes and Shook received 7,724 votes, a margin of 121 votes.

Shook, trailing by about eight-tenths of a percentage point, is within the 1 percent requirement to be eligible for requesting a recount. He had previously said he would ask for a recount if eligible.

In the District 45 N.C  Senate race, Democrat Steve Goss expanded his lead over Republican David Blust. According to reports, Blust gained by 28 provisional votes  in the other three counties in the district, but in Watauga, Goss received 107 provisional votes and Blust received 58 provisional votes.

Blust, though still eligible to call for a recount, now trails Goss by 323 votes. He confirmed he had sent a letter to the state Board of Elections requesting a recount.

A statewide recount has already been ordered by the state Board of Elections because of a close N.C. Court of Appeals race.

Watauga Board of Elections chairwoman Stella Anderson read a statement from the state board announcing that the local boards must schedule a recount to be held between Monday and Wednesday.

The state board also said other calls for recounts were “imminent” and the board requested elections director Jane Hodges to schedule the recount at her discretion. Hodges, who has to schedule precinct workers to handle the recount, said the action would likely occur on Wednesday.

State general statutes give a local elections board the discretion to order a recount when necessary to complete a canvass, but can’t order one after the state Board of Elections has already denied a petitioner.

Candidates can request a recount if they are within 1 percent of the winning candidate’s vote total and the recount must be requested by 5 p.m. of the first business day after the canvass. A different rule applies for statewide candidates, though the 1 percent margin still applies. A demand for a recount must be made in writing by noon on the second business day after the county canvass.

On Thursday, the county Board of Elections and six precinct officials gathered for a state-required hand-eye recount of ballots in the N.C. Supreme Court Justice race, selected before the election as a test count to gauge the accuracy of voting machines.

The precinct officials and two Board of Elections members counted paper ballots for two precincts to check those totals against the numbers generated and tallied by the machines on election day. Anderson said the hand-eye counts exactly matched the machine counts for the two precincts.

Friday, the Board of Elections approved or denied provisional votes based on registration records and addresses. The board approved 170 of 262 provisionals, and those ballots were then opened by two precinct workers, one from each political party. The paper ballots were then fed into the machine and counted. Nearly two-thirds of the ballots favored Democratic candidates, with political observers noting many of them were probably cast by college students.

The provisional ballots that were denied had a variety of shortcomings. Hodges said voter registration records were checked as far back as 1992, as well as Division of Motor Vehicles records. Each person casting a provisional ballot had to write on the ballot envelope the circumstance under which they registered and voted. “We have left no stone unturned,” Hodges said.

In one case, a voter claimed to have inserted an unmarked ballot into the tallying machine and asked for a provisional ballot. That ballot wasn’t approved because there was no way to determine that, even if unmarked, the blank ballot had belonged to that voter. Some people made “unreported moves out of the county,” while others had moved. but returned to the county on election day believing they could vote.

In another case, a voter cast a provisional vote, but put a post office box number on the ballot, and the Board of Elections turned down the ballot because of a lack of a confirmed street address. Many casting provisional ballots had registered late or not at all, and one who hadn’t registered and was turned down claimed a right to vote simply by virtue of “being a U.S. citizen.”

Another vote, formally challenged by Hodges, was cast in the early, one-stop voting period by someone who died before election day. Under statute, that vote was no longer valid and the board upheld the denial of the vote.

County attorney Tony di Santi, advising on the proceedings, said convicted felons also lost their right to vote until the right was restored by the court. Even then, the felon would have to register again to be eligible.

Provisional ballots had attachments that allowed those voters to register, and apparently some took advantage of the opportunity and should be eligible in the next election, barring any residential moves.

The only sticky situations occurred when provisional ballots literally stuck to the gum of the envelope flaps. In those cases, the elections board marked new matching ballots and discarded the originals.

At the canvass, Hodges confirmed the ballots had been secured and that no one had access to them from election night until the canvass.