(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Riggs' lead grows after 2nd recount in NC Supreme Court race. Elections officials won't order a third [1]
[]
Date: 2024-12-10 14:41:00-05:00
The results of a second — and now final — recount in the still-uncalled race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court have affirmed a narrow lead for the Democratic incumbent.
Justice Allison Riggs was ahead by 734 votes following the first recount in the race, which finished last week. Her Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin asked for a second recount, in which officials investigate a random sampling of ballots and compare what they see on the paper ballots to the results tallied by the ballot-counting machines.
That second recount ended Tuesday. The State Board of Elections announced that it found an additional 56 votes for Griffin and an additional 70 votes for Riggs, for a net gain of 14 votes in Riggs' favor.
The main purpose of that second recount, called a hand-to-eye recount, is to decide whether a third recount is needed. If so, state officials would individually review every one of the 5.7 million ballots cast this year instead of just checking a random sample.
Under state law, Griffin would only have been allowed to call for a third recount if this second one had shown him chipping away at Rigg's lead. Since the opposite happened, there will be no full hand-to-eye review of every ballot cast this year.
However, the race isn't official yet.
Griffin, who is currently on the state Court of Appeals, is still pursuing a separate challenge that seeks to have officials throw out more than 60,000 ballots cast in this year's elections, based on what GOP leaders claim are instances of fraud or irregularities. Democratic leaders on Tuesday held a press conference calling that a "sinister" attempt to overturn election results by throwing out legitimate ballots.
"Judge Jefferson Griffin must concede immediately," Riggs' campaign manager Embry Owen said Tuesday. "He must retract his challenges of over 60,000 North Carolinians’ ballots, including those of service-members and elected officials. This election has concluded, and the voters have issued a clear verdict in electing Justice Riggs."
Griffin didn't respond to a request for comment.
The State Board of Elections will meet Wednesday to discuss Griffin's request. The North Carolina Republican Party sued last week trying to move up that meeting and have it be held sooner — potentially before a federal judge could rule on a related lawsuit by the Democratic Party seeking to essentially force the Board of Elections to throw out many of Griffin's ballot challenges — but the GOP's request for an earlier hearing was denied by a state trial court judge and again, on Tuesday, by the Court of Appeals.
State Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said Tuesday he believes state elections officials have been uncooperative, and that the GOP's actions challenging those thousands of ballots will improve public confidence in elections.
"We are committed to ensuring that every legal vote is counted and believe these protests should succeed," Mercer told WRAL.
Recount details
The random sample of the second recount, which ended Tuesday, involved elections officials looking at 3% of the ballots cast in person in each of the state's 100 counties.
Voters sometimes mark their ballots the wrong way — for instance, drawing a check mark in a bubble instead of filling it in — or with too faint of a mark. Such errors can lead to the machine count not fully reflecting what the paper ballots themselves show when reviewed by humans.
"We once again owe our gratitude to the county boards of elections, and all of the workers who have made sure that ballots were counted accurately in this contest,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a news release. “Recounts, especially hand recounts, are tedious, difficult work.”
Rigg's lead in the election still formally stands at 734 votes, since the second recount's findings aren't considered official election results, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections said.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.wral.com/story/riggs-lead-grows-after-2nd-recount-in-nc-supreme-court-race-elections-officials-won-t-order-a-third/21762664/
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
