McCrory gets votes out of Randolph, but is it enough?

The outcome of the election has been in limbo as Republican incumbent Governor Pat McCrory has challenged votes in more than half of North Carolina’s 100 counties; the majority of those challenges have now been dismissed by Republican-led county Board of Elections.

It does not appear that there were enough “protests” filed challenging a voter’s eligibility to swing the governor’s race in McCrory’s direction, but the state board of elections ruling still leaves open two complaints in Bladen and Durham counties before the race can be resolved.

His Democrat challenger, Roy Cooper received, 112,047 Durham County votes. The counties are to inform the State of the number of ballots in question and then the state will then aggregate those ballots in statewide races to see if they would affect the outcome of those races.

Durham County’s Board of Elections will also be at the State Board Wednesday as the state decides whether to grant the recount of those 90,000-plus ballots.

Trey Nix, campaign manager for the Cooper campaign, said in a statement he is confident Cooper will be the state’s next governor and a recount will not change the election’s outcome.

At a press conference on Tuesday executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party Dallas Woodhouse addressed the yet undecided statewide races as the campaign of Gov. And it would be premature to call on McCrory to abandon his campaign for an accounting of the votes in the governor’s race.

While Stephens did not identify any conflicts of interest in his rejection letter, one of the attorneys in the Brooks Pierce firm is Jim Phillips, who is serving as co-chairman of Democrat Roy Cooper’s transition team.

For many, the battle raging between North Carolina’s Republican old guard, which held complete control for the past four years, and the growing coalition of minority, labor, and religious groups offers a glimpse into how a resistance movement could blossom under a GOP-led Congress and a President Donald Trump.

Union County voted for McCrory in a large margin on Election Day with McCrory earning 63.53 percent of the county’s vote to Cooper’s 34.19 percent of the vote, according to the State Board of Elections.

“I think either the state board of elections either has to come out and say, ‘Here was the problem, we’ve checked on it, we’ve verified, here’s what we’ve done, and we think the count’s accurate, ‘” said Wrenn.

“The state board of elections did not dismiss anything”. The deadline to submit such challenges was 25 days before Election Day. The state board would then certify winners from the final totals.

With much still up in the air, one thing is for certain according to Woodhouse: the notion that the legislature would be pulled in to address a contested election is not viable.

Too-close-to-call races for state auditor and a few General Assembly seats also could have recounts and be affected by the litigation and the Durham protest.