Election Day was eight days ago, but North Carolinians are still not sure who will be the next governor of the Tar Heel state.

That is in large part because of more than 90,000 votes that came in from Durham County late Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning that swung the gubernatorial race from Republican incumbent Governor Pat McCrory to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper.

The Durham County Board of Elections voted 2-1 on Wednesday to allow an evidentiary hearing challenging the estimated 94,000 votes to be held on Friday. The decision came after a complaint was filed last week by a general counsel for the North Carolina GOP. The complaint alleged that equipment problems encountered on Election Day may mean the vote count may be inaccurate.

Thomas Stark, who filed the complaint, was not able to provide any evidence as to how the vote county may be inaccurate when questioned at Wednesday’s meeting, according to IndyWeek reporter Lauren Horsch.

Durham County Board of Elections chair Bill Brian, a Republican, told WCHL on Monday that he had seen no evidence that the results had been tampered with or were incorrect.

Listen to Brian’s conversation with WCHL’s Aaron Keck.

 

The questions arose after Durham was in the news a lot on Election Day due to equipment malfunctions. Brian also said the numbers came in so late because they had to manually upload votes to the state.

Brian said ultimately votes from six locations – five early voting and one Election Day precinct – were input manually.

Brian said the decision was made to withhold those votes and manually upload them to allow the other votes to proceed as scheduled and not have a large gap of time where no votes were reported from the county as a whole.

Brian added this was not the first time votes had to be manually checked in, but he did say it may be the most high-profile case.

“I can’t give you a specific example, but I believe cards have failed before and we’ve done manual entries before,” Brian said. “It just hasn’t happened to sway an election at the last minute.”

Campaigns for both gubernatorial candidates have hired attorneys to represent the candidates if the election results go to trial.

As it stands, Cooper holds a lead over McCrory. If the counties and state ultimately certify the results – which the counties are slated to do this week – and the margin is within 10,000 votes, either candidate in a statewide race can ask for a recount.