NC Board of Elections holds emergency meeting on Durham vote

DURHAM (WTVD) -- The North Carolina State Board of Elections held an emergency meeting Sunday by phone afternoon to consider a formal request by the Republican Party to hold a vote recount in Durham County.

It decided to hold a hearing on the issue later this week.

Gov. Pat McCrory's campaign announced Saturday that GOP lawyer Thomas Stark asked the State Board of Elections to require a recount because of questions about 90,000 or so Durham County ballots. His appeal says there are questions about how those ballots were tallied because of a computer problem at several voting sites.

Durham County's Republican-controlled local elections board already rejected a protest over those ballots.

Stark also asks the state to consider issues related to provisional ballots and people who voted through same-day registration in the heavily Democratic county.

The McCrory campaign says if Durham County has a recount and its results are the same, the campaign will be prepared to drop its statewide recount request.

Campaign manager Russell Peck says in a news release that a Durham recount would allow everyone to "move towards a conclusion of this process."

Democrat Roy Cooper leads McCrory by about 7,700 votes, according to unofficial statewide results. About 20 counties have yet to finish counting votes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report