RALEIGH — Following a midterm that included almost half a million voters, the Wake County Board of Elections today unanimously certified the results of the Nov. 8 general election.
Outcomes of races remain unchanged, and no candidate is within the threshold for a recount, a news release says.
“More than 100 people worked securely and in bi-partisan teams over nine straight hours (Friday) to process the unofficial results, remaining absentee and provisional ballots and confirm their accuracy before certification, demonstrating again the commitment to the integrity of Wake County elections and our democracy,” said Gary Sims, Wake County Board of Elections director. “It really was one of the smoothest elections ever.”
By design and according to law, no election ends on Election Day, the BOE says.
Since Tuesday the Wake County BOE has worked to count the absentee-by-mail ballots that arrived after Election Day but were postmarked on or before Election Day. They also researched and verified provisional ballots and conducted a series of post-election audits, including a sample hand-to-eye count on the results from two randomly chosen precincts.
In Wake County, it took roughly 2,400 poll workers and more than 80 Wake elections staff to efficiently provide 17 days of Early Voting and staffing for 208 precincts on Election Day, the most precincts of any county in North Carolina.
The five-member bi-partisan elections board unanimously certified seven different bond referendums on the ballots, including a $530 million Wake County Public School bond, $353 million Wake Tech Community College bond, a city of Raleigh recreation bond and four Wake Forest bonds for park, greenway, transportation and parking improvements, the release said.
“The elections team will continue to work through the labor-intensive process of recording who voted, as well as the method of voting, and accurately entering this data into the state’s public database. This “voter history” always takes many days to complete in the busy post-election days,” the release says.
The state’s Voter Search tool will be updated as soon as possible. This N.C. State Board of Election webpage has more information on the process.
