Attorney General Roy Cooper’s campaign team has claimed, according to its calculations, that Cooper has an insurmountable lead over incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory.
“This race has simply gotten away from Pat McCrory,” said Marc Elias to reporters in a phone-in conference. “More North Carolinians voted for Roy Cooper than Pat McCrory, and did so by a close but significant margin. There is nothing Gov. McCrory or his legal team are going to be able to do to undo what is just basic math.”
Cooper has a 6,600 vote lead over McCrory according to the NC State Board of Elections. However, according to Elias, that lead has increased recently to 7,448 votes and is expected to grow slightly, based on the mix of counties that have not reported on outstanding ballots.
McCrory and state Republican officials have filed protests questioning voter integrity in 52 of the state’s 100 counties. The first of those counties that began deliberating those protests on Friday overwhelmingly rejected them.
The McCrory campaign filed an appeal with the Durham County Board of Elections after the election after discovering some discrepancies in voting due to supposedly faulty memory cards.
The appeal hearing occurred Friday, with NC GOP general counsel Thomas Stark pointed to a state review comparing the results from five of the cards with the county’s reported results that found some minor discrepancies in a handful of races, but not the tight governor’s race.
“Every vote should count in an election,” Stark said during his closing arguments Friday. “The process should be clear and honest. We have paper ballots for those machines. It is a simple matter to count those.”
During closing arguments, Kevin Hamilton, a Seattle-based attorney representing the North Carolina Democratic Party and the Cooper campaign, said Stark presented “empty accusations and speculation” that seeks to undermine public confidence in the process.
It’s unclear exactly how and when the appeal process will move forward in the Durham case, according to The News & Observer.
