A statewide recount will determine whether Republican Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby has unseated Democratic Chief Justice Cheri Beasley in the top position in North Carolina's courts system.
At the conclusion of county canvasses, Newby led Beasley by 366 votes – out of nearly 5.4 million cast in the election.
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Two counties had some major problems with their vote counts that needed to be corrected Monday.
The biggest issue was in Robeson County, where officials forgot to include more than 1,900 votes cast at an early voting site in Pembroke. County elections director Tina Bledsoe explained to her board that staff had counted the votes and printed the totals out on election night, but she forgot to complete the final step and upload the results from that tabulator to the State Board of Elections.
When those votes were recounted and uploaded Monday, they favored Newby by a little over 50 votes.
Robeson County also had to finish counting and uploading hundreds of provisional ballots cast on Election Day.
In Washington County, officials inadvertently counted more than 600 mailed absentee ballots twice. They subtracted those double-counted votes on Monday, which also increased Newby's lead.
Beasley's campaign requested the recount Tuesday morning.
"The race for chief justice will not be over until every single vote has been counted," Beasley said in a statement. "Our team has officially requested a statewide recount and will be filing protest petitions across the state to ensure over 2,000 absentee and provisional ballots that were wrongfully rejected are included in the final tally. This race is far from decided, and we look forward to ensuring the counting process continues so that every voice is heard."
Nearly 25,000 of the 41,000 provisional ballots cast statewide were rejected, More than a million absentee ballots were cast by mail, but it was unclear Tuesday how many of those were rejected.
Elections officials have specific rules for whether these types of ballots are accepted and counted or not. Sometimes, however, it does come down to a judgment call by county boards.
Newby's campaign has also filed some protests over absentee ballots that arrived after Nov. 6 – the statutory deadline for most mailed ballots, which courts extended this year because of the pandemic – or had problems that voters were allowed to fix.
"Recounts are an important part of the elections process that help guarantee voters’ wishes are realized in the closest of contests," state elections director Karen Brinson Bell said in a statement.
The recount process in each county will likely start late this week – counties have to provide public notice 48 hours in advance – and must be completed by Nov. 25. The State Board of Elections is scheduled to hold its canvass to certify results statewide on Nov. 24.
Each ballot will be run through tabulators operated by bipartisan teams under the supervision of county elections board members. A quorum of board members must be present whenever any ballots that didn't scan properly are counted by hand and whenever a determination of a voter's intent needs to be made.
If the apparent winner after the initial balloting is the apparent loser after the recount, that candidate can demand a second recount, by hand-to-eye, in a sample of precincts chosen at random by the state board, officials said.
All recounting is open to the public.