State Sen. Bob Rucho, chairman of the Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee, on Wednesday afternoon called Gov. Pat McCrory’s challenge to the election results, which now show him trailing by more than 10,000 votes, a principled stand to ensure North Carolina voters that elections are fair, honest, and transparent.

“I applaud Gov. McCrory for standing up for the people of North Carolina, and during this period of time he’s taking a lot of heat,” Rucho said.

Attorney General Roy Cooper was leading McCrory by 10,329 votes, based on State Board of Elections results reported just before 3 p.m. (Seven counties had not completed their official canvasses.) He and Democratic Party officials from the state to national levels have demanded McCrory concede the election to Cooper. If the vote margin remains above 10,000, McCrory would lose his automatic right to call for a recount under state election law.

Rucho, a Mecklenburg County Republican, was joined by Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, outside the State Board of Elections headquarters in Raleigh.

The SBE scheduled at 4 p.m. hearing to review an appeal by Durham attorney Thomas Stark, who also is the attorney for the state GOP, to order a hand count of 94,000 Durham County absentee ballots. The Durham County Board of Elections rejected Stark’s petition two weeks ago.

“As part of my responsibility in the Senate, chairman of redistricting and chairman of elections, I will say to you that I have some serious concerns” about the gubernatorial election, Rucho said.

The last-minute appearance of 94,000 ballots “raises some serious issues about the integrity and the honesty of the election, and you know what? The people of North Carolina deserve better,” Rucho said.

“Under the circumstances I’ve asked the chairman and the members of the Board of Elections to stand tall, and go forward, and do their job in trying to guarantee fair and honest elections by requiring and ordering Durham to open up their policy on transparency, and openness, so that the election process can go forward,” Rucho said.

Rucho said his concerns about Durham include 6,000 absentee ballot applications for which the Durham County Board of Elections denied “proper review, and they’re a public record.” He said the Durham board “seems to be stonewalling openness and transparency, and that contradicts fair and honest elections.”

That is troubling, he said, in view of a State Bureau of Investigation probe involving the primary election in Durham County, “where some irregularities, and potential voter fraud, and lost ballots occurred,” and an Elections Board employee was fired as a result.

Rucho said he hopes that the errors made in the primary election have been corrected, and the media should be asking the SBE if the corrections were in place for the General Election.

Asked why he would push for the recount when the Durham Board of Elections said it found no hint of voting irregularities, Rucho referred to the SBI investigation uncovering wrongdoing after the primary was held, “so at what point did they even know that was going on?”

Woodhouse also characterized the recount appeal as a safeguard to electoral integrity.

“We want to make sure that people of North Carolina have confidence in the results. As a party we believe in elections. We believe in elections having consequences. We want to just fully make sure that people have confidence in this system,” Woodhouse said. “But this is not a win-at-all-cost matter. This is simply providing confidence in the result.”

He said if Durham does conduct a recount, “We will be hoping that they find no problems, and that there are no discrepancies despite a lot of irregularities in this process. We will be rooting for them.” But the process must play out “so that whoever the next governor is can go into office with the full confidence of a legitimate election.”

Woodhouse said the 94,000 ballots, and six voting machine computer chip irregularities in Durham “is enough to call for a recount. … There is an opportunity for significant, even accidental, human error here.”

He said McCrory put forth “a very reasonable proposal” to forgo a statewide recount if a Durham recount were held, and it resulted in no major change in the vote outcome.