Berger files election protests as recount begins in NC Senate race

North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger — who trails in the Republican primary to retain his Triad-area seat — filed several protests over the race Tuesday, hours after also requesting a recount of the ballots. 

The moves kicked off what could be an odyssey of ballot-counting and last-ditch legal maneuvers to erase Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page’s 23-vote lead in the high-profile race. The race has attracted national attention because it could mean an extraordinary end to the political career of the man who, for over a decade, has been one of the most powerful people in North Carolina politics. 

Berger filed four election protests regarding the ballots of 13 voters, according to Jason Tyson, a state elections board spokesperson. Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for the Berger campaign, confirmed the number. In the protests, the Berger campaign alleged that: 

• Eight Guilford County voters were wrongly given ballots that didn’t include the GOP primary.
• Three unaffiliated voters in Rockingham County were wrongly allowed to participate in the GOP primary after initially requesting Democratic ballots.
• A Rockingham County voter was wrongly denied the opportunity to vote. 
• A Rockingham County voter claims to have updated their party affiliation on their voter registration from Democrat to unaffiliated before the deadline but was still given Democratic ballot.

Meanwhile, officials in Guilford County began their retabulating votes within hours of Berger’s recount request, completing a recount of early voting ballots Tuesday before adjourning. Guilford officials will resume the recount on Wednesday. Rockingham officials are expected to launch their recount on Thursday. Elections officials in those counties are expected to consider Berger’s protests at a later date. 

Page, who has called on Berger to concede, was confident a recount would return a result in his favor. “Phil Berger has the right to request a recount, and I’m confident it will confirm the outcome: We won,” Page said in a statement on Tuesday morning.

Later in the day, Page’s campaign dismissed Berger’s election protests as baseless and unnecessary. “The grand total for these paltry allegations is 13 voters,” Page spokesman Patrick Sebastian said in a statement. “That's not enough to change the results of this election, even if any of these allegations held up.” 

The protests filed Tuesday are a separate legal process from the recounts. Either could affect the race. The recount requested by Berger could change Page’s 23-vote lead out of 26,000 votes. The election protest could lead to other ramifications, such as new votes being added or thrown out, or even a new election ordered.

“Close election results like this are why the review and recount process allows for a careful review to ensure all legal votes are counted,” Felts said.

If Berger prevails, he’d beat long odds to retain his seat as one of the state’s most influential legislators. Recounts in North Carolina rarely change a result. 

On Election Day, Page led Berger by two votes in the GOP primary for state Senate District 26. Page’s lead grew to 23 votes after provisional, overseas and military ballots were tallied. Elections officials in Guilford and Rockingham counties completed their review of ballots, known as the canvass, on Friday. 

In his recount request to the state elections board on Tuesday, Berger said his campaign identified 220 ballots worth reexamining, pointing to voting trends in Rockingham and Guilford counties. In 217 cases, Berger said, voters were recorded as participating in other races on the ballot, but not his own. That could be because people skipped that race, or it could be that they tried voting in the race but didn’t have their votes tallied due to errors.

"The math on this is: The 233 potentially impacted voters is over 10 times the current vote difference of only 23 votes and could, obviously, impact the election results,” Felts said.

The recount process doesn’t specifically allow for county-level elections officials to review those ballots on an individual basis. However, the law gives the state elections board discretion to ask county officials to examine such ballots. Berger made that request Tuesday. The state board is expected to discuss Berger’s request at a meeting on Wednesday. 

Sebastian, the Page spokesman, alleged that Berger is relying on state elections officials to “bail him out and overturn the will of the district's voters.”

What comes next could take weeks or months, particularly if there are legal challenges. Berger and Page have already begun legal funds — special fundraising efforts to help pay for post-election legal fights, separate from the campaign accounts that allow them to circumvent some of the laws that constrain who politicians can normally take money from, and how much. 

Skepticism over process

Page has publicly questioned the recount process since Election Day and in recent days seemed to allude to efforts by Berger to examine potential irregularities that could lead to protests. 

Over the weekend, Page’s campaign sent a text advertisement warning voters that the Berger campaign might contact them. 

“Phil Berger’s campaign is asking voters to claim they received the wrong ballot in an effort to challenge his election defeat. If anyone from the Berger campaign is pressuring you to sign something that isn’t true, please reply to this message,” the text from the Page campaign’s legal fund says, adding: “submitting a false affidavit is a felony.”

The Berger campaign said the message amounted to intimidation: “The highest-ranking law enforcement official in one of the counties [in the race] is threatening voters in an effort to stop them from coming forward,” Jonathan Felts, a Berger spokesman, said in a statement. 

According to Felts, someone had reached out to the Berger campaign with concerns about their ballot, prompting Berger’s people to look for more who might have similar concerns. He said the campaign had found at least one Guilford County resident who thinks he might have received the wrong ballot and wasn’t able to vote in the Senate race despite living in the district. “We then contacted other individuals who voted in that same community and have identified others who believe they were given the wrong ballot,” Felts said.

Page also has targeted State Auditor Dave Boliek, whose office oversees the State Board of Elections. Page says Boliek should distance himself from any recount process because of the auditor’s allegiance to Berger. Boliek campaigned with Berger and endorsed him ahead of the March 3 primary. A recount would be overseen by county and state elections officials appointed and ultimately overseen by Boliek. 

Berger played an influential role in passing the law that moved oversight of the state’s elections from the state’s Democratic governor to the Republican auditor. And Boliek has leaned on Berger’s bench to staff his office: Boliek’s chief of staff was previously a top lawyer for Berger at the legislature, and Boliek’s spokesperson is Berger’s former spokesperson.

Boliek says he doesn’t need to recuse himself because he doesn’t have any role in the vote-tallying process. “Those decisions are made by the appointed board,” Boliek said last week. But Page says the appearance of a conflict of interest alone could diminish trust in the recount. 

Page also noted that Boliek appointed former state elections board member Bob Rucho, who recently resigned after making campaign donations in unrelated races and making public statements in support of Berger and against Page — actions board members are banned from.

Next steps

Three types of recounts exist under North Carolina law. None happen automatically; they must be requested by the trailing candidate and can only be performed if the race is close enough.

The first is a machine recount, in which ballots are fed through the state’s vote-counting machines again to ensure the numbers line up with what was originally reported. It’s the fastest option, and the one least likely to lead to meaningful changes in the vote tally.

Two other, more involved options involve tabulating the ballots by hand — which is where the numbers are more likely to change. That’s because some people fill out their ballots poorly or incorrectly, in ways that machines can’t read but humans can.

For instance, if someone draws a checkmark through the circle next to a candidate’s name, rather than filling the bubble, their vote wouldn’t be counted by the machine. But it likely would be counted in a hand recount, when elections officials see what happened.

In what’s called a partial hand-to-eye recount, election officials take a random selection of 3% of the ballots cast in the race and examine those one-by-one, tallying the results by hand. If the results move the needle substantially enough for the trailing candidate, then a full hand recount of every single ballot can be called for. That’s the slowest recount process but also the most likely to lead to changes in the vote count. It’s also not guaranteed to happen, if the partial recount doesn’t find enough changes.

Any of those three types of recounts must begin within three business days of the candidate’s request.Recounts are open to the public so that people can observe the ballot-counting process, though members of the public aren’t allowed to inspect individual ballots or videotape the process. 

Elections officials may only remove a ballot under specific circumstances. For instance, state law says ballots cannot be rejected simply because a voter made a technical error in marking their favored candidate. A vote may be nullified only if it is “impossible to clearly determine the voter's choice,” the state elections board said in a recent memo to county boards. 

“If an official ballot is rejected by a scanner or other counting machine, but human counters can clearly determine the voter's choice, the official ballot shall be counted by hand and eye,” the memo said. 

Recounts are a bipartisan process. County boards are instructed to arrange for a Republican and a Democrat at each tabulator. A ballot cannot be fed into the tabulator until both representatives have handled the ballot.

Previous recounts

Page’s lead of just 23 votes is narrow by any definition. But there’s also little indication that the recount process would be expected to change the tally by much, based on recent history. Recounts in the 2020 and 2024 elections for statewide races, involving millions of ballots, led to fewer than 23 votes changing.

• In 2024, when Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin for a state Supreme Court seat by 734 votes, Griffin called for a recount. It found 56 additional votes for him but 70 additional votes for Riggs — a net change of 14 votes, out of nearly 5.4 million ballots cast in that election.
• In 2020, when Republican Paul Newby defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley for the race for Supreme Court chief justice, Beasley called for a recount. It narrowed Newby’s margin of victory from 416 votes to 401 — a net change of 15 votes, out of about 5.4 million votes cast in that election.
• In 2016, when unofficial results showed Republican Gov. Pat McCrory trailing Democratic challenger Roy Cooper by fewer than 10,000 votes, McCrory requested a recount. It led to Cooper’s lead growing. McCrory’s campaign responded by accusing several dozen voters of committing fraud, in an effort to cast doubt on the results. The fraud accusations were all false, however. McCrory conceded defeat about a month after the election, and his campaign operatives spent the next eight years fighting a defamation lawsuit from some of the falsely accused voters before ultimately prevailing at the state Supreme Court. 

Trump endorsement 

The race has attracted national attention because it could mean an extraordinary end to the political career of the man who, for over a decade, has been one of the most powerful people in North Carolina politics. Berger’s legislative track record has helped him win 13 elections in a row by double-digit margins — and a few without any opposition.

Berger helped Republicans take control of the legislature in 2010 and became Senate president pro tempore in 2011. As Senate leader, he has strong influence over which measures advance in the chamber. He has stayed in the leadership position through several governors and House speakers. Over the past 15 years, Berger has led Republican measures to cut taxes, slash regulations, and rewrite state policies to more align with the GOP’s agenda. 

Trump endorsed Berger in the race and urged Page — whom Trump has praised and considers a longtime supporter — to drop out of the race and instead work for his administration in Washington. Page said he declined Trump’s offer because he believed he could be more effective for Rockingham County residents in the state Senate. 

Page — who on the campaign trail alleged that Berger had lost touch with his constituents — gained the trust of many Triad voters even before running for state Senate. He served as the local sheriff for nearly 30 years. He helped lead Trump’s reelection campaign in North Carolina in 2020. He ran for lieutenant governor in 2024, placing fifth among the GOP primary field of 11 candidates. Page carried Rockingham and six other counties in that primary.

Berger cast Page as someone who can’t handle higher office, pointing allegations of mismanagement at the Rockingham County Detention Center, which is run by the sheriff’s office. Page has said his department has followed the law and implemented training and procedures to improve the center.