Still trailing by 23 votes, NC Senate leader asks for hand recount 

The leader of North Carolina’s upper legislature is requesting another recount after a machine tally showed him losing a contested Republican primary for his state Senate seat by 23 votes. 

North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) asked the state’s Board of Elections in a letter on Friday to grant a hand recount at a sample of voting precincts in Senate District 26.  

The state’s election rules give the board the discretion to authorize candidate requests for a sample or full hand-to-eye recount following a machine recount in close races. 

“Review by hand not only eliminates the potential of a machine error, but such review is also imperative to ensure these ballots are treated uniformly in this contest,” Berger wrote in his Friday plea. 

The original election-night tally showed Berger losing by only two votes. The Trump-endorsed candidate noted that a total of 222 ballots were omitted from the machine count after being flagged as overvotes or undervotes. 

“Those uncounted ballots, which could include discernible votes for candidates, are nearly ten times the margin in this contest,” Berger wrote. “If the machines have misread just a fraction of those ballots, then the current results of the election could be incorrect.”

State election officials would randomly select 3 percent of voting precincts and early voting sites for a partial hand recount and could order a full recount if this tally finds significantly different results, according to The News & Observer. 

“Although I believe a hand-to-eye recount of all the ballots is warranted here, I ask that, at the very least, the State Board order a hand-to-eye recount of ballots that were read by the tabulators as having overvotes and undervotes,” Berger wrote in his Friday letter. 

The Senate leader is competing against Sam Page, a county sheriff, in the Republican contest. 

In a statement following Berger’s initial recount request earlier this week, Page expressed confidence he would continue to come out ahead in the race against the incumbent state lawmaker. 

“We won this election because the voters of Guilford and Rockingham counties made their decision clear,” he wrote on the social platform X on Tuesday. “Phil Berger has the right to request a recount, and I’m confident it will confirm the outcome. We won.”

North Carolina’s elections board is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to certify the election results, but a winner in the GOP primary isn’t expected to be declared.  

Board spokesperson Jason Tyson told the News & Observer in a statement on Friday that the board doesn’t plan to add Berger’s hand-count request to the upcoming meeting’s agenda on Wednesday.

“At its meeting this past week, the state board indicated it would follow the recount process set by state law,” Tyson said.

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