🗳Partial Hand Recount to Begin in Senate District 26 Contest

[littlemissmartypants]

Raleigh, N.C. — The county boards of elections in Guilford and Rockingham counties on Tuesday morning will begin a partial hand recount of ballots in randomly selected precincts in the N.C. Senate District 26 contest between candidates Phil Berger and Sam Page.

After a full machine recount of all ballots cast in that contest, Candidate Page leads Candidate Berger by 23 votes, 13,135 to 13,112. State law [N.C.G.S. § 163-182.7A(a)] permits the trailing candidate to request a hand-to-eye recount in a random sample of Election Day precincts or early voting sites within 24 hours after the initial recount. Berger requested the recount.

...

Berger must pick up a net two votes in the partial hand-to-eye recount to trigger a full hand recount of all ballots cast in the contest.

Under state law, the State Board must order a full recount if the trailing candidate makes up enough ground in the sample of precincts such that extrapolating that change to the entire Senate district would result in a different winner of the contest.
...
Source: ncsbe.gov press release, Monday, March 23, 2026.

Your Vote! Your voice!
❤️pants

[Wonder Why]

1. Hand count: "Joe, is your hand up or isn't it?" Machine count: "1, 2,... Yup, there are 17 of them in the county."

[littlemissmartypants]

2. It was a hand count. It's over and he lost. If you want clarification it will be here:

For example:

Post-Election Procedures and Audits

Sample Audit

The sample hand-count audit is a test to ensure that voting equipment reads voters’ choices accurately. Bipartisan teams at every county board of elections conduct this audit after every election. The audit compares election results counted by voting equipment with hand counts of ballots from randomly selected voting sites.

This hand count is open to the public and completed before each county certifies its results. This requirement has been part of every North Carolina election — big or small — since 2006.

Here’s how it works:

The day after each election, the State Board of Elections randomly selects two sample groups of ballots for each county to count by hand. These samples can be all ballots cast at selected Election Day precincts or early voting sites, or all the absentee ballots cast in a county. The State Board then informs the counties of their sample groups of ballots and which contest on the ballots to count.

For primaries and elections that include a presidential contest, the contest audited is always the presidential contest. In other elections, the contest audited is the top contest on the ballot. Bipartisan teams of trained volunteers count the selected ballots by hand. Then, they compare the hand-counted results with the results counted by the voting machines and note any differences. Minor differences between the hand count and the machine count are not unusual for the following reasons:

The machine did not count a selection made by a check mark or X or where the bubble or box was lightly shaded by the voter.
The voter did not fill in the write-in oval but wrote a candidate's name on the line.
Human error during the hand count.
The county sends the machine counts and hand counts to the state with an explanation for any discrepancies. The State Board reports the results publicly as part of the final certification of each election.

https://www.ncsbe.gov/about-elections/election-security/post-election-procedures-and-audits

Let me know if I can assist further.