Phil Berger Requests Recount in Tight Republican Primary
Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page was up 23 votes in the state Senate race after counties finished canvassing.
Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger on Tuesday requested a recount and filed election protests in his primary against Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, according to filings submitted to state and county elections officials.
Page leads Berger by 23 votes—a difference of 0.08 percentage points.
Berger wants the Guilford County, Rockingham County, and state elections boards to conduct a machine recount as well as reassess 233 specific ballots. He wants a partial hand recount of 217 “undervotes,” or ballots where no vote was recorded in the legislative contest, and three “overvotes,” or ballots with votes recorded for both candidates in the state Senate primary.
The State Board of Elections is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday to decide how to direct the elections boards in Guilford and Rockingham counties. Any machine recount would need to be completed during open meetings before the state canvass on March 25. The canvass is the process by which the NCSBE certifies results and confirms that counties properly tabulated all votes.
While the state has some discretionary authority in how to perform recounts, a partial hand recount is typically only supposed to occur in a randomized sample of voting sites after a machine recount is performed.
