NC delays end of recount in Supreme Court chief justice race between Newby, Beasley
The race between two judges vying to become the next chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court won’t end Wednesday as originally expected.
The end of the recount in that election is being delayed until after Thanksgiving, according to the N.C. Board of Elections.
Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, was leading incumbent Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, by a margin of 433 votes out of 5.4 million total, as of 1 p.m. Wednesday.
The two have traded leads since election night — first as mail-in ballots continued coming in and later as a recount started making some minor changes to the vote count.
That recount was expected to finish up Wednesday afternoon, and most of the state’s 100 counties have finished their work. But at least three counties — Mecklenburg, Forsyth and Guilford — won’t finish on time and will resume their work Monday, said Pat Gannon, spokesperson for the N.C. State Board of Elections.
“All three are large counties with hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in the election,” the state elections board said in a press release. “All ballots must be inserted into tabulators as part of the recount.”
The North Carolina Board of Elections already certified the results of hundreds of other elections around the state, including for president, governor and senator. Only a few remain uncertified. The Supreme Court race is the only one statewide in question.
And while Newby remains in the lead, the three counties that are delayed are all urban, Democratic-leaning counties that could end up helping Beasley.
Beasley is the first Black woman to serve as North Carolina’s chief justice. A member of the Supreme Court since 2012, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper appointed her as chief justice in 2018 after Mark Martin, the former chief justice, retired early to take a job in academia.
Newby protested Cooper’s decision at the time. As the court’s longest-serving associate justice, he said he should have been given the top job instead of Beasley, even though he and Cooper are from different political parties.
And during this year’s election, it looked like voters agreed that the top job should go to Newby. After the unofficial count finished, it showed Newby up by 406 votes, The News & Observer reported.
Beasley called for a recount, but so far the results have not gone her way. Both candidates have gained additional votes in the recount, but Newby’s total lead has grown slightly.
The race could still remain undecided Monday if there are additional legal challenges. Both Newby and Beasley have filed formal protests with the state board, which are separate from recount requests. A hearing date has not yet been scheduled for either of those.
When the results are announced, the trailing candidate can call for a hand-to-eye recount in a random sample of 3% of precincts in each county, according to a news release. The candidate has 24 hours to make the request.
In addition to the chief justice race, the board didn’t certify four other races Tuesday due to other formal protests: Wake County District Court Judge 10F, House District 36 in Wake County, Hoke County Board of Education and Wayne County Register of Deeds.
Recounts are somewhat rare, but the delay isn’t unprecedented.
In 2016, the race for governor was extended by a recount and legal challenges for a month beyond Election Day, with Republican Pat McCrory not conceding to Cooper until Dec. 5 of that year.
Recount results can be found at ncsbe.gov/2020-statewide-recount-results.
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 10:53 AM with the headline "NC delays end of recount in Supreme Court chief justice race between Newby, Beasley."
