At its meeting on Wednesday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) certified the results of the 2026 primary election for all contests, including the State Senate District 26 race between Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, across the state. This excludes the US Senate and US House of Representatives in NC-1, NC-3, and NC-6, as well as NC-10, NC-11, and NC-13 in 10 counties.
The state certification followed the 100 county boards of elections canvassing and certification.
NCSBE executive director Sam Hayes told the board that, aside from delayed reporting from Halifax County that pushed statewide reporting back by about one hour, the primary election ran pretty smoothly.
About 1.5 million votes were cast, with a 19.7% turnout of the more than 7.6 million eligible registered voters. He said the big story was that early voting was up 25% from the last midterm primary in 2022, and was almost comparable to the turnout on Election Day.
Both he and the board said the success was due in large part to the work of the 100 county boards of elections directors, staff, and poll workers.
Three types of audits used for voting accuracy
The board discussed the three types of audits they used to assess accuracy.
The first is Voter History Audit, which checks the number of voters to get voter history, which means they checked in to vote at the voting site and the number of ballots actually cast. Those numbers are then compared to check for any discrepancies. Any significant discrepancies could signify election fraud.
Adam Steele, associate general counsel for the board, said there were 44 counties whose voter history and ballots cast matched exactly, and 48 had minor differences of no more than 3 ballots. In total, no county had a difference of more than 10 ballots from their voter history, or just one ballot per county across the whole state.
The Sample Audit is required by law. Counties are assigned a couple of voting sites and their absentee ballots, and they go through and review them by hand to see how they compare to the machine counts for the top-level contest, which this year was the US Senate race. Each county received 200 samples, and of those audited, five showed differences of only one or two votes between the machine and hand counts, while the rest were identical, demonstrating the accuracy of the certified and tested machines.
The Voter Eligibility Audit is the final audit. He used an example of someone who votes early or by absentee vote who may get convicted of a felony or passes away, making that voter ineligible to vote or have their vote counted. The state board runs a report and flags those types of voters for counties to review. A notice is sent to the voter, giving them an opportunity to explain why they were eligible.
Steele said there were about 80 voters who had earlier absentee ballots that were subject to the challenge and 2/3 to 3/4 of those ended up being taken out of the count, which, he said, showed how smooth the process went for the election across the state.
16 voters on registration repair project list not counted
He did, however, say that there were 10 county boards of elections that had the provisional ballots of a total of 16 voters on the Registration Repair Project list in the federal contests that were not counted.
The Registration Repair Project collects identification numbers from registered voters who do not have a North Carolina driver’s license or ID number or Social Security number in the state’s voter registration database, which are used for verification.
Despite not affecting the outcome of any of the contests, the board directed those counties to count the votes of those voters in the federal contests within two weeks. The board will certify those contests at its April meeting.
Additionally, Steele said about 130 voters need to be added back to the Registration Repair list.
He said they came off the list due to a “different kind of process” that’s being fixed to prevent this from happening again in the future. Voters’ votes cannot be discounted, and they will be notified that if they don’t provide identification before the general election, they will be required to cast a provisional ballot.
Action on DNC letter tabled
The board also decided to table any further action until next month’s meeting regarding a letter sent by the Democratic National Committee last fall alleging that North Carolina was in violation of certain provisions of the National Voter Registration Act for the state board’s failure to designate certain state-funded disability services offices as voter registration agencies at public universities, including those at the UNC System and at the colleges within the North Carolina Community College systems and also paratransit offices throughout the state.