Democrat’s lead widens in North Carolina governor’s race

“It’s pretty troubling that the chairman of the Durham County Board of Elections, which is now under investigation for mishandling ballots in the March 2015 primary, can claim that nothing improper happened before conducting a thorough investigation or manual recount“, Diaz said.

Durham County also received scrutiny for problems with vote-counting machines on Election Night.

No one had been to Edgecombe County Board of Elections to complain either, Edgecombe Elections Director Jerry Spruell said.

Right now, more than 58,000 provisional ballots have yet to be counted, as do a smaller number of absentee ballots. The DMV said Friday that it has delivered information connected to about 8,100 driver’s license numbers.

“There is nothing that Gov. McCrory or his legal team will be able to do to undo what is just basic math”, Elias told reporters on Friday. McCrory, ousted by voters in large part because of the discriminatory HB2 legislation he signed into law, has a history of attempting to deny voters their voice.

“That’s really disappointing. He (McCrory) just needs to recognize that he lost the election”, said Kevin Hamilton, an attorney for Cooper.

The Cooper campaign dismissed McCrory’s absentee vote complaint as a desperate move by an incumbent who faces losing re-election.

The North Carolina Republican Party’s top attorney says with thousands of votes yet to count, Gov. Pat McCrory, from almost 4.7 million cast. The Democrat got almost 80 percent of Durham County’s votes. Pat McCrory and whether the trailing candidate will seek a recount.

Regardless of whether there is a recount, Stark has said he doesn’t expect any significant changes that would influence the governor’s race.

Durham officials said “minor complications” occurred starting early on Election Day.

Orange, Wake and Halifax counties also rejected election protests on Friday. The three board members spent two hours listening to witnesses and decided a software glitch that blocked votes from being uploaded to the statewide tally didn’t have anything to do with accurately logging votes.

Roy Cooper, the Democratic attorney general who challenged McCrory, declared victory on November 8 when results showed him 4,500 votes ahead.

Pat McCrory has cited Guilford County among 11 counties in the state for a protest against possibly improper absentee ballots cast in the tight gubernatorial race against Democratic challenger Roy Cooper.

“With the ones found on November 1, I believe there are an overwhelming number of occurrences already to review and investigate”, said James Hehl, a member of the Bladen County Board of Elections, in a letter to the N.C. State Board of Elections.

The votes had to be manually uploaded and the county board – in conjunction with the state board – chose to delay that process until after election day results were entered as to not slow down those results.

But the steady accusations of mass fraud may be setting up an nearly unheard-of challenge, one that looks unlikely unless the margin closes to fewer than 1,000 votes.

On Friday N.C. counties were supposed to certify their final election results, but instead 50 of them met to address formal protests after allegations of possible voter fraud surfaced throughout the week.

The equipment glitch forced a tedious process of manually entering the early ballots late on November 8, and mistakes were possible, county elections board head William Brian Jr. said at a news conference. Staff recommendations must then be approved or amended by local boards of election before the eligible votes are counted. Washburn said a preliminary hearing must be scheduled to determine the validity of the protest before any canvass can take place.