Senator Phil Berger is asking the N.C. State Board of Elections to allow at least eight voters who believe the Senate District 26 race was incorrectly absent from their ballots to vote again in the narrowly decided race.
Berger is also asking the Guilford County Board of Elections to explore whether additional voters' ballots in the March 3 primary election incorrectly omitted the Senate District 26 race between Berger and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.
Berger, the Senate's longtime Republican leader, is currently trailing Page by 23 votes in an election that seems poised to shift the balance of power in the N.C. General Assembly.
The Berger campaign is alleging that several Guilford County voters who should have had Senate District 26 on their ballot did not. Berger won the Guilford County portion of the district by a 2-to-1 margin, while Page won Rockingham County by a 2-to-1 margin.
Berger filed three additional protests impacting a total of five other voters.
Those include a Rockingham County woman whose registration the Berger campaign believes was incorrectly processed and a Rockingham County voter who changed her registration from Democrat to unaffiliated before the deadline for the primary election. The Berger campaign also alleges there are three unaffiliated voters who requested a Democratic ballot and started filling it out before returning to request a Republican ballot.
"Close election results like this are why the review and recount process allows for a careful review to ensure all legal votes are counted," Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Berger's recount effort, wrote in a statement.
Of the voters who believed they received the wrong ballot, two voted during early voting at the Deep River Recreation Center site.
The protest says that the Berger campaign then contacted "multiple Guilford County voters" who had also cast ballots in the March 3 primary election.
The Berger campaign believes that it has identified six additional voters who incorrectly did not have the race on their ballots. Two of those voters cast their ballots at the Jamestown Town Hall site during early voting.
Berger's complaint did not say where or when the four other voters who believe they received the incorrect ballots had voted.
"Because the County is the custodian of the records that can confirm what ballot styles were issued to these voters, and because multiple SD26-eligible voters have reported that SD26 was missing from their ballots, we file this protest to compel investigation and appropriate remedial relief," the Berger campaign wrote.
Under state law, attorneys for Berger wrote, voters who incorrectly had an election omitted from their ballot can have a two-week period after the canvass to recast their ballots with the election included and have their votes added to the total.
in a written statement, Patrick Sebastian, a post-election advisor for the Page campaign, argued that the complaints do not amount to enough votes to shift the results of the primary election.
"We trust that our election officials will not take this bait and will affirm the will of the voters, not the will of one man," Sebastian wrote.
Also conducting recount
Berger also requested a machine recount in the race shortly before the 12 p.m. Tuesday deadline.
In his letter requesting the recount, Berger also pointed to a number of "overvotes" and "undervotes" meaning voters who filled in too many bubbles on their ballots or voters who were recorded as not having filled in any ballots in the race.
The Berger campaign said it has identified three overvotes and 217 undervotes across the district.
"The math on this is the 233 potentially impacted voters is over 10 times the current vote difference of only 23 votes and could, obviously, impact the election results," Felts wrote, adding together the overvotes, undervotes and election protests.
The Berger campaign is asking the N.C. State Board of Elections to task county boards with removing both overvote and undervote ballots during the recount process and visually checking them to see if the machine had recorded them correctly. That would, Berger wrote, be a way of avoiding a costly and time-consuming full hand recount in the race.
The N.C. State Board of Elections has added Berger's request to its agenda for its meeting at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
The Guilford County Board of Elections started its recount Wednesday, with Berger potentially losing one vote. By the end of the day, the board had yet to reach election day ballots.
That board will return to continue its recount at 9 a.m. Wednesday, with the Rockingham County Board of Elections starting its recount on Thursday.
