Local county boards of election to recount ballots for Chief Justice race

One statewide race in North Carolina has yet to be decided, and will go to a recount. Local votes will be recounted on Friday and Monday.

Current NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, who was appointed to the role by Gov. Roy Cooper, ran to retain the position, and was challenged by current Associate Justice Paul Newby. The race between Beasley and Newby was the closest statewide race by far, with the final margin after all votes were counted standing at only 406 votes out of nearly 5.4 million cast statewide, with Newby in the lead.

State election law allows the trailing candidate to request a recount if the margin is under 10,000 votes, and the Beasley campaign put in their request on Tuesday. 

Lenoir County Elections Director Steve Hines said the Lenoir County recount will take place Friday, November 19, at 9 a.m. Lenoir County received a loan of a high-speed ballot counter from the state, which will allow election officials to process between 100 and 200 ballots per minute. 

“We had 28,525 votes that are going to be fed back through that machine, so it will be somewhere around, maybe three and a half and four hours for us to be done,” Hines said. 

The count is taking place at the Fairfield Recreation Center at 800 Greenbriar Road in Kinston. Hines said the location was chosen to provide ample space for members of the public to be present, while maintaining social distancing. 

Greene County Elections Director Trey Cash said the recount for his county will take place on Monday, November 23, beginning at around 8:45 a.m., at the Greene County Board of Elections Office at 115 SE First St. in Snow Hill, with members of the public welcome to observe. The process will also be streamed live via the Board of Elections Facebook page, Cash said. 

Cash said he expects the machine recount for Greene County to take around five hours, with a break for lunch. 

Jennifer King, Elections Director for Jones County, said the Jones County recount will also take place on Monday, beginning at 9 a.m. at the Jones County Board of Elections Office located at 367 Hwy 58 S in Trenton. 

King said she expects the process to take around seven hours to complete, with members of the Board of Elections operating five ballot counting machines. 

Following the recount process, King said she also hopes to be able to hold a hearing regarding a protest filed by the Beasley campaign regarding two provisional ballots that were rejected during the initial count. 

Lenoir County will also be holding a preliminary hearing of a protest by the Beasley campaign regarding rejected provisional ballots. Hines said the hearing would take place Friday, November 20 at 2 p.m., at the Fairfield Recreation Center, with members of the public welcome to attend. 

Hines also provided Neuse News with the final numbers for the write-in campaign for the Lenoir County Board of Education. Michelle Cash received 6,485 votes, and Nancy Gilmore received 6,088 votes.