Provisional ballots could make difference in some races

There are still enough uncounted provisional ballots to change some 2008 election winners in North Carolina.

Craven County has 940 and Pamlico County has 98 of them. The 81 counties reporting to the North Carolina State Board so far have 44,984 provisional ballots and that does not include Mecklenburg.

The deadline for a total number was 5 p.m. Thursday, but state board Deputy Director Johnnie McLean said that "you always have a few stragglers and some ... won't get recorded until tomorrow."

The Associated Press and other national media declared Democrat Barack Obama winner of North Carolina's 15 electoral votes for president on Thursday.

At that time, totals recorded on the state elections board Web site gave Obama 2,123,390 votes to John McCain's 2,109,698, or 49.70 percent to 49.38 percent.

If the individuals who voted on provisional ballots are U.S. citizens and did not vote elsewhere in this election, however, the presidential vote on those ballots will count in this election, said Tonya Pitts, Craven County elections director.

Provisional ballots are used when there are questions about the legality of a vote or about a voter's qualifications. If the questions are resolved, the votes count.

One local race vote total, the N.C. House District 3 contest, is close enough that it could be affected by the provisional vote.

Democrat Rep. Alice Underhill is ahead of Republican Norman Sanderson in that race in unofficial totals.

Pitts said 113 military absentee votes were added to Craven County's tally on Thursday, bringing it to 41,469 voters, 60.65 percent of those registered. The additional numbers did not change the 49 to 47 percent vote ratio in the Underhill-Sanderson race.

Sanderson said Wednesday that he did not remember seeing provisional votes change the outcome of a race with as much of a margin as the 411 ballots that separated him and Underhill.

"I am disappointed because so many people were involved and helped and worked so hard," he said. "But if Alice won the election, it is the people's choice, and we will abide by that and see what can be done next time."

Sanderson clarified his position to county Republican leaders on Thursday, saying that he was not conceding the race, but would go with the outcome of the vote canvass scheduled for Nov. 14.

Pitts said all of the Craven County provisional ballots have not been researched yet but, unlike the provisional ballots in some counties, most here do not appear to be from people who registered at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Those registrations go directly to the state elections board, then on to the appropriate county, she said, and some problems with DMV transfer of that information has surfaced in some areas.

"Most of them so far in Craven look like people who were just not registered," she said.

At 2 p.m. Friday, six Democrats and six Republicans selected by the Craven County Board of Elections will do a hand-eye comparison of paper ballots and the machine tapes from the scanners that tallied them to make sure they were accurately recorded.

The State Board of Elections will inform them before that time which, of as many of six precincts, to examine.