NC Governor Not Conceding, Files for Recount

Pat McCrory’s Office announced Tuesday it officially filed for a statewide recount with the North Carolina State Board of Elections. He said the recount would not occur until after the county boards of election certify their results. Democrat Roy Cooper holds a slim lead over McCrory in the still-undecided governor’s race.

A spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections confirmed that results now show McCrory trailing Attorney General Cooper by one-tenth of a point.

“The real question people should be asking is, why is Roy Cooper fighting to count the votes of dead people and felons?”

The state elections board also met Tuesday to hear both parties’ pitches on which votes should and shouldn’t count.

Also on Tuesday, Republican Gov.

The law led to widespread boycotting of North Carolina by entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen and Itzhak Perlman while sports organizations such as the National Basketball Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association moved major events out of state. She criticized the Governor for continuing to delay the finalization of the election, even as Roy Cooper’s lead jumped by more than 2,000 votes. Cooper’s campaign has said McCrory’s actions “set a new standard for desperation”.

North Carolina state law says that if the legitimacy of the election and voting process is questioned, it’s up to the state legislature to decide who is the victor. McCrory’s campaign acknowledged the recount won’t happen until counties finish their tallies, but they wanted to ensure they didn’t miss a deadline under state law. In this race, a candidate trailing by fewer than 10,000 votes is entitled to a recount.

Democrats are concerned that McCrory could lean on the Republican-controlled state legislature which, by law, can declare a new election or even declare a victor “if it can determine which candidate received the highest number of votes”, a decision that is “not reviewable” by the courts.

McCrory is behind Cooper, the state’s Democratic attorney general, by just 6,600 votes out of a total of 4.7million ballots that were cast across the state.

Republicans connected to the McCrory campaign have filed protests and challenges in 52 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, some of those have already been dismissed by the county boards. Marc Elias, a lawyer for Cooper, said it is “beyond unlikely” McCrory could prevail in a recount. McCrory’s largest challenge, affecting 94,000 votes in Durham County, was thrown out by the county’s election board.