DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - The general counsel for the state Republican Party has filed a formal complaint in North Carolina’s tight governor’s race demanding that 90,000 Durham County ballots be recounted by hand in part because tabulations were manually entered into the state election system by local officials on election night with “bleary eyes and tired hands.”
Attorney Thomas Stark asked in the protest with the Durham County Board of Elections to recount the ballots before the county’s canvass this coming week. Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s campaign released Saturday a copy of the protest, which was filed and signed Friday by the interim director of the Durham board.
Stark, who didn’t identify himself as the GOP general counsel in the complaint, says an error in tabulation machines that scan ballots caused memory cards to fail, prompting officials to transcribe results into the state system.
The original statewide count shows Democrat Roy Cooper ahead of McCrory by 5,000 votes. But at least 50,000 provisional ballots still must be examined. Counties must submit their final results by Nov. 18.
Jason Torchinsky, the top lawyer in McCrory’s effort to monitor the final election counts, said in a release that what happened in Durham County is “extremely troubling and no citizen can have confidence in the results at this point in time.”
Cooper campaign spokesman Jamal Little described the GOP claims of “malfeasance” in the tabulations as “a desperate attempt by the McCrory campaign to overturn results of an election they have lost.”
Like other county boards in the state, Durham’s board is comprised of two Republican members and a Democrat
Cooper has already declared victory and said he’s confident he’ll ultimately be certified the winner.
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