North Carolina's Senate District 26 Primary Recount

NC Senate District 26: Sam Page/Phil Berber Recount

The race for North Carolina's Senate District 26 Republican primary remains undecided after voter tabulator machine recounts in Guilford and Rockingham Counties confirmed a razor-thin 23-vote lead for Sam Page over Phil Berger, the President pro tempore of the North Carolina Senate.

After the initial count, Sam Page held a narrow lead of 23 votes. Voter machine recounts in the two key counties have upheld this margin, showing no changes to the outcome. Most ballots are properly marked, with one oval clearly filled for the "Vote for One" race. These ballots are straightforward for machines to count and remain valid in any recount. Despite this, Phil Berger has filed protests that are advancing to evidentiary hearings scheduled for this week in both counties.

These hearings could lead to a partial hand-to-eye recount, where election officials manually examine ballots which the voter tabulators where unable to read to determine if voter intent can be determined. These are ballots that a voter either: filled in both ovals; filled in an oval than crossed it out and filled in the other oval; placed an X or check mark next to a candidates name rather than filling in an oval; etc.

This situation echoes the 2000 Bush-Gore recount in Florida, where punch-card ballots with "hanging chads" and "dimpled chads" caused widespread confusion and legal battles. That controversy led to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which funded states to replace an outdated punch card voting systems with electronic machines designed to reduce ambiguity.

The promise of electronic voting machines was to provide clear, unambiguous results that machines could count accurately. Yet, in 2026, North Carolina faces the possibility of returning to manual ballot examination to resolve a close race.

The winner of the Senate District 26 primary could be decided by ballots that voters did not fill out perfectly, but whose choices can be discerned during the hand-to-eye examination. This process is similar to the manual reviews conducted in Broward County, Florida, in 2000.

The Senate District 26 recount shows that even with modern technology, human judgment still plays a role in determining election outcomes. These situations are not uncommon and justify the call to return to "paper ballots" that are manually counted after polling sites have closed.

The 2000 Florida recount led to significant changes in voting technology and election laws. North Carolina's current situation shows that electronic voting systems are not perfect and that close races always test the limits of electronic election procedures.

As the Senate District 26 race unfolds, it offers a real-world example of why election mechanics matter and how every vote must truly counts.

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