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Shop now at Amazon and search WimSound. That's W-I-I-M-S-O-U-N-D. It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. A good morning to you.
Some pretty big political news off the top this morning. We've been watching over the last couple of weeks whether there would be a recount request in the very close race up in North Carolina's 26th Senate District. That pits the current leader of the North Carolina Senate, Phil Berger, against Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. The deadline was yesterday at noon for either candidate, presumably Berger trailing by 23 votes, to request a recount. He did, in fact, do so.
So we will now watch this process play out across North Carolina. To walk us through some of the details this morning, it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Andy, I'm reading directly from the letter that Phil Berger's team sent to the state board of, or I guess hand-delivered to the state board of elections yesterday. It says, quote, Based on a review of available records of the Senate District 26 race, there are one overvote and 134 undervotes in Rockingham County, two overvotes and 83 undervotes in Guilford County.
Off the top, what is an undervote and an overvote and how will this play, potentially play into this recount measure taking place?
Well, an overvote is where a ballot gets run through the tabulator, and the tabulator says that this person voted more than they are allowed to.
So, for example, if you had two candidates in this race in that Republican primary, and the tabulator said, Both of the bubbles for those candidates were marked and it spat through there. Undervote is just the opposite, is that it did not detect any marks for either candidate in that race.
Now, overvotes, it could be that somebody was confused for whatever reason, or they changed their mind. That does happen and they didn't think to get a new ballot. They just said, Well, I'll just vote for the other one. Or maybe they marked out one and they put a big X through it and then filled in the other bubble. That could happen as well.
And the machine would count both of those. For the undervote, it is possible that somebody had a very light mark or just a stray mark or something like that to where maybe there was intent to vote for somebody, but it didn't show up on the machine. It wasn't deep enough, big enough for the tabulator to pick it up.
However, in the vast majority of cases, an undervote is just somebody just didn't feel like voting in that race. Andy, you used a key word that we're probably going to be talking about over the next couple of weeks, potentially months, depending on how long this challenge continues. Intent. And I remember having a lot of these discussions with you over the last couple of years when we've looked at close elections. Voter intent is a very real thing here in North Carolina.
However, this is going to start out, as I understand it, likely with a machine recount.
So individuals are not actually going to be scrutinizing those ballots. They're just going to be running them through a high-speed tabulator, correct? That is.
Now, that is true. Berger has requested a partial hand-eye recount for just the overvotes and undervotes. Here's the thing that we're going to see when these votes come in, when you get the machine recount, and then with the hand-eye recount. And this is frustrating for a lot of folks. Very rarely, when you run these things through the tabulators twice, you get the exact same result.
You know, the machines, you know, if you run it through a different machine, one might be a little more sensitive than the other. There's any number of things that could happen. And when you have a hand eye count, there's even more variation because you have human judgment entering into this.
Now, there's going to be, when you get to the hand eye count phase, which I'm sure we're going to get to at some point, if we have any kind of variation with the machine recount. There's going to be people from, you know, it's going to be a multi-partisan team looking at these things, and they're going to have people from both campaigns staring over their shoulders as they're going through this. But you always get slight variations in these. You almost never get exactly the same count. And while that's frustrating, that's just the reality when you start dealing with large numbers of ballots.
Yeah, no question about that. And I think a lot of that has to come down to, Andy, the kind of equipment that is used. When you vote on election day, typically that's a, I think it's a DS-200, is the standard vote tabulation machine. That is not a high-speed machine. It is expected to take one ballot at a time.
It's not a slow process, but you're not just going to feed ballot after ballot into this thing constantly. On the other hand, as I've seen in the past with some of these recount attempts or when ballots are scrutinized, they run this through a machine that can go through tens of thousands of ballots in a pretty quick timeframe.
So I guess maybe that is part of the reason why there can be those small levels of discrepancy.
Well, even if you run it through a small machine, just on different days, you get slight variations.
Now, you don't get huge variations. For example, we had a statewide recount, was it, six years ago, in the North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice race. After they did all the official counts and the tabulations and the canvassing and recanvassing, Paul Newby was up by 406. They did a recanvas, and so it's 416. They did a statewide recount, and it only changed the margin from 416 to 401.
And that's across an entire state. When you get something down to the size of a single state Senate district, The possible, while you do have variation, the range of that variation is going to be really small. You're looking at almost certainly less than five, I would expect, between the official count and what we'll have on the recount. If it's anything bigger than that, then okay, maybe we see there could be a problem here. I want to ask you about this, Andy.
There were some comments made by the Burger camp earlier this week about some, I believe, a town in northern Guilford County, Jamestown, I think was the name of it, the municipality. Apparently, that is split across a couple of different districts. There were some voters that allegedly told the Burger campaign that they didn't see that race. They were not given the opportunity to vote in that race. Is that something that, as I understand the process, I mean, based on your address, you attest to where you live, you sign off on a piece of paper, they scan it with kind of like a grocery store kind of gun scanner thing.
It seems like it'd be pretty hard to not receive the right ballot. It's really rare. I mean, but it does happen. Humans are in charge of the process. We make mistakes.
And so it is possible. But once again, we have to get into the realm here of How possible is it? Like, did it have happened at least 23 times? And could all of those 23 people that received the wrong ballot have been Berger voters? No, it is worth noting that the two precincts that are split between the 26th district and another district are both up there on the northern border with Rockingham County.
And those are the precincts in Guilford County that Paige tend to do better. One of those precincts Paige actually won in, and the other one was very close. I think the difference was about three votes between the two of them.
So when you factor in all those things, the likelihood that Berger is going to find everything he needs and everything's going to fall in place his way in order to get this election overturned, I think, is highly unlikely. We've got that 23 vote margin right now that was codified during the county canvas process that happened Friday back, Friday of last week. That actually is the exact same margin that we learned the Friday before that.
So that number's been consistent now for about a week and a half. And that margin and tally indifference does remain the case right now. All right, Andy.
So I've got the letter in my hand, the official letter delivered to the state board of election requesting this recount. How does the process immediately play out from here?
Well, they're going to order the counties to go ahead and run that recount. They'll do the machine tabulations that it should be done in an afternoon. And then the counties will report that up to the state board. If there appears to be enough of a discrepancy to justify a hand-eye recount, we could go to a partial hand-eye recount, basically a sample. And then if we see more variation, then we say, okay, let's just hand-eye recount the whole thing.
The first two rounds you could get done before the state canvas next week. And so if we don't have any further challenges after that, we could still have this thing settled basically on time. If not, or if the Berger campaign wants to take this to court or appeal from the state board beyond to the Superior Court of North Carolina, then it could drag on for weeks. maybe months, probably weeks after that. Yes, and of course, we've seen some pretty high-profile races over the last couple of years, Andy, that have dragged on in some cases for weeks, if not months.
You mentioned this earlier. I just want to make sure I get some clarifying factor you on this. In his letter, he says that he requests during the initial recount for that hand eye for those undervotes and overvotes. Is that something that he is allowed to request, or do they start with the machine? And the next step of challenge would be a hand eye for those ballots that have the undervote or the overvote?
Well, he's allowed to request it. The question is: is the state board going to grant that? Is the state board going to ask the counties to do that? I kind of suspect, and this, I'm going out on a limb here, that they might go ahead and grant that just so that they can eliminate a phase. Because if we don't get it here, it's going to come up later on.
And so, in a sense, you kind of streamline the system if you do that. Ahead of time. And there's always, unfortunately, room for interpretation a lot of times of state law and state regulations. But I think the easiest way would be to go ahead and grant that. Once again, I don't think that you're going to get anywhere near a 23-vote variation by looking at those overvotes and undervotes.
So by getting that. out of the way, so to speak, I think it'll help streamline things. The State Board of Elections does have a meeting coming up a little bit later on today. It is not immediately clear whether they will be discussing that during that public meeting as they continue with some of their general post-election processes that continue to play out here across North Carolina. Nevertheless, we'll be keeping an eye on it over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
We appreciate the information this morning. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. AHHHHHHHHH It's 21 minutes past the hour. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
Well, it turns out the state of North Carolina is a pretty desirable place for people to be. We've seen that over the last couple of years, the state is ranked number one for business. That comes from CNBC and a couple of other entities across the United States, with it being a lot of business growth in the state due to a pretty strong conservative tax reform and policy over the last 15 years. The state of North Carolina business is booming. That is causing a lot of influx to the state.
One of the concerns that we are continually hearing from individuals across North Carolina is skyrocketing property taxes. To walk us through a brand new report this morning over at the John Locke Foundation, it's my pleasure to welcome Joe Harris to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Joe, the headline of your report, How Much is Too Much? An Analysis of Property Tax Revenue Growth in the State's Most Populous Counties. You've got a lot of numbers and data in here.
Walk us through why you decided to dig into these figures across the state. Thank you so much for having me on, Nick.
So going back to the point that you just made about how North Carolina has had very strong migration over the past five to ten years, that really has been a driving point for skyrocketing home values in the state. Over the past decade, we've had about 104% increase in the value of a typical home in the state. Compared to nationwide, that rate was only about 87%, which was still very high. But our strong migration is really putting that upward pressure on home prices.
Meanwhile, we've seen per capita income go up by about 58%, which is really strong. It just has not been able to keep pace with the rising home values. And as a result, people are having a more difficult time keeping up with their property tax bill. And over the past few months, the House has actually put together the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reduction and Reform. And they've been looking into this issue and trying to determine what exactly is going on and identifying some viable policy options.
And during this period, there's been some pushback from the local governments, as you can imagine, that are a little hesitant to have any type of constraint or reform put on their property taxes. And a big argument that they've made is we've increased our property tax collection so much. Because there's been so much inflation and so much population growth.
So, the purpose of this study was to actually compare their revenue growth. To actual inflation and actual population growth, and see how those two compared to one another. Before we get into some of the numbers, the hard numbers and figures and facts that you've got in your report, folks probably have received letters over the last couple of years from their county, noting them or telling them, explaining to them that they're going through a reevaluation period, depending on the county, depending on the municipality that you're in, that can happen anywhere from two to four to, I think, eight years is the limit as it stands in state statute.
So somewhere in that ballpark, Joe, you've had people that purchased homes back in 2019, 2020 for $100,000, $150,000, $200,000. They get a bill from their county a couple of years later saying, hey, congratulations, your house is worth $600,000. Your property tax bill's gone up four, five, six times. That's a huge shock to many individuals across the state. Yes, exactly.
And we've seen in quite a few counties across the state where their property tax revenue. The amount that they're collecting per year has literally doubled. Over the past decade.
Meanwhile, we have seen significant inflation and some counties have seen significant population growth, but we're talking 50 to 65, 70 percent at the most when you combine those two rates.
Meanwhile, some counties have increased their revenues 100 to 110%. Which is going to be way beyond what they need to maintain services. At that point, once they're increasing revenues past that inflation plus population growth, what they're doing in effect is they're extracting more money out of the economy and growing the size and role of government within that county. Joe, is it fair to say that for these local municipalities, these counties across North Carolina, property taxes is their largest or in some cases, one of the largest ways in which they generate revenue throughout the year? Yes, 100%.
Property tax is going to be the largest source of revenue, especially when we look at revenues that aren't generated based on some sort of fee, a decent bit of the money that the counties bring in. They're providing some sort of service and then you're paying a fee for that. But when you look at just tax dollars that are brought in at the county level, it's pretty much the sales tax and the property tax. And the property tax is the largest source of revenues for local governments. And it is typically the most reliable source of revenues as well.
We do see some fluctuation in home values. And occasionally, we do see home values dip. We saw this occur from 07, 08 till about 2013, 2014.
However, home values are relatively consistent and they're reliable for the local governments.
So it's typically from their perspective, it's a very attractive source of revenue. Yeah, and as you noted, a very consistent source of revenue for them as well.
So as you were comparing and digging through these numbers, you were constantly referring to in the report over at the John Locke Foundation website something known as the levy limit. And that's what you used as kind of your baseline to do this comparison. What is a levy limit and what's its relevance?
Okay, so there's three Main policy options that are typically available if you're trying to. Restrain or limit or cap property tax revenue, and a levy limit is just one of those. We'll talk about the other two just briefly. You could cap the actual tax rate. right, we pay a tax rate on our property value.
The we could place an actual cap on that. That would be the first policy option. And we actually already have a cap here in North Carolina of one point five percent. But that's 1.5% per county and per municipality.
So in actuality, you could end up paying 3%. That being said, none of the municipalities and none of the counties are anywhere near that 1.5% right now.
So it's what we would say is it's a non-binding cap. That said, though, even with a tax rate cap in place, if the assessment values increase rapidly, you could still end up with a very large tax bill. And that's what we saw happen over the past five years. It wasn't that the property tax rates were accelerating, it was the property values accelerating. You could also place an assessment limit cap, and that's where they would place an actual limit on the taxable value of each individual property.
The Drawback with that is that we could still see the counties increase the property tax rate substantially. And then we have what is a levy limit. And a levy limit is going to be unique in that it's an aggregate constraint. And what it's going to do, it's going to place a cap on the annual growth rate of total property tax collections in a jurisdiction, whether it be a county or a municipality. For example, If A county collected $10 million in property tax last year, and we have a 5% levy limit.
And there's several different ways we could go about determining how to calculate that levy limit. But if we had one that was 5%, then they would only be able to increase total revenue from property taxes by 5% and collect $10,500,000. Yeah, and you know, for folks that follow this, potentially in their local county or their local city or town in which they live, and they may have heard this term before. Oh, we're going property or we're going tax neutral with property tax increases where the value of your house could go up 30, 40, 50, even 60 percent. The county then comes back and says, okay, well, we're going to cut the tax rate so that revenue stays somewhat neutral.
But even in that formula as well, there is a pretty big flaw because not everybody's property value raised at the exact same rate. Yes, and here in North Carolina, the counties are required to publish what would be the revenue neutral rate, but there's no requirement for them actually to implement that rate. And normally they do not. Normally, they They publish that rate and then they will drop the rate, but it normally gets nowhere near revenue neutral. And once again, that's a great point, Nick.
Just because it's revenue neutral for the county doesn't mean it's revenue neutral for each individual. And this is also true about the levy limit. That is a promise to the property taxpayers for the entire jurisdiction as a whole.
So you're placing a cap on the total amount of revenue the county can bring in, but it will still vary from individual to individual how much their property tax bill will change under a levy limit. We'll continue the discussion on property taxes with Joe Harris from the John Locke Foundation coming up after this. You're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Spring is packed patios, parties, wedding weekends, and RK Zero Proof keeps you in the mix without the morning after regret. As the original Zero Proof Spirits brand, RK's Warm Molecule gives you that real-deal burn of whiskey or tequila with none of the alcohol, zero calories, zero sugar, and a whole lot of freedom to enjoy the moment.
Sip smarter this season at RKZeroProof.com. It's 5:37. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FMWBT. We are talking property taxes this morning on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Our guest, Joe Harris from the John Locke Foundation, and a brand new report that he's got out.
Let's jump into a couple of the results from this report, which folks can find over on our website, johnlock.org. Let's start off in Cabarris County, where there's been a lot of growth, a suburb, some would call it northern areas of Charlotte, where there's been a lot of growth there. What have some of their numbers look like over the last couple of years?
So yes, in the analysis, what I essentially did is I mimicked the effect on revenue that a levy limit would have. And the way I designed it, I designed the levy limit to track population growth plus the inflation rate. And so looking at Cabarris County, I actually looked at the 10 biggest counties in the state by population, but Cabarus actually showed the largest revenue growth relative to what that levy limit would have been. From 2016 to 2026, had they been under a population plus inflation levy limit, they would have been able to grow their property tax revenue by 68%. which is quite substantial.
And that's because there was 33% inflation and they had over 30% population growth. Cabarras County had some of the strongest population growth in the state.
So under that levy limit, they would have been allowed to have 68% growth, but they actually grew their revenue by 111%.
So a 43% gap between those two. And as a result, over that 10-year period, they collected hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money that they would not have been able to under the levy limit. And when you look at that final number, it rounds out to about $326 million additional dollars that were collected over that 10-year period of time, Joe, that you highlight. That's a lot of money for a municipality to collect additionally that we're not just talking about that's the total. That's over what they could have collected under this levy limit.
I would imagine that if you talk to residents in Canberras County, they would not say that they've got an extra $300 million worth of value out of their local government over the last 10 years. Exactly. And these last few years, the numbers came in at about 50 to 60 million.
So, an easy way to think about it is: the county is essentially extracting $50 to $60 million out of the economy each year out of the hands of hardworking taxpayers. Above what inflation and population growth says that what they should be doing. Essentially, what they're doing is they're growing the size of government by that amount each year. Moving down the list, let's look at our state capital, Wake County. Obviously, a lot of growth in that area as well, not only related to government, unfortunately, but generally people moving to the RTP area.
But a lot of folks in Wake County, it's a much larger area than Cabarris County, but some of these iNumbers are absolutely popping off the charts as it relates to some of the additional revenues that they've collected as well. Yes, of those 10 biggest counties that I analyzed, it had the second biggest gap. Inflation plus population there in Wake County would have allowed 63% revenue growth.
However, they grew revenue by 103%, so about a 40% gap between the two. And over the 10-year period, 2016 to 2026, that resulted in taxpayers paying about $1.6 billion in tax revenue that they would not have paid had there been a levy limit. And I think this is an important point: that 63% increase in property tax revenue over a decade would still be a very strong revenue increase.
So, an important point about the levy limit is that it's not a decrease. to the county budget. There's been some misconceptions about this: that if we put a levy limit in place, that's actually gonna cut the county budget. There's no cuts that are going to take place.
However much they've increased spending over the past decade, that's already baked or cooked in. to the equation. All this levy limit would do would be restrain future Tax revenue increases going forward. But yeah, when we see that $1.6 billion in extra tax revenue brought in by Wake County, it's really jarring because when you see numbers like that, you almost expect that you're looking at a state budget, not a county budget. Yeah, no question about that.
And I would assume a similar situation up for those that live in Wake County. I'll note of which many are also living in municipalities that have seen their tax property tax values go up there as well.
So they're unfortunately getting hit from a couple of different angles as it relates to these ballooning taxes. But Joe, you highlighted something at the beginning that I want you to mention again. You know, as this growth continues, some of these municipal governments and some of these counties are sucking down tens, hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth of extra dollars. There's no question about it. If that windfall of cash is available, unfortunately, government will find a way to spend it.
Yeah, that's a great point. And it's quite interesting because what we've actually seen at the state level, Nick, over the past 10, 12, 13 years is we've seen excellent tax reform. Where we've seen our personal income tax rate at the state level be driven down to now, it's at 3.99%. And What's a little bit unfortunate about that is that a lot of these tax savings at the state level have been offset by tax increases at the county and municipality level.
So when Taxpayers should be feeling like they have more income available as a result of keeping more of their paycheck because they're paying less in personal income tax to the state. Instead of them actually being able to keep that money, that money is now being diverted to their county and municipality local governments through property taxes. Yeah, many of those folks likely getting notices from their mortgage companies over the last couple of years, big time escrow analysis, jacking up your monthly bill by potentially hundreds if you live in a house that's a lot more, potentially thousands of dollars a month with those limits. Let's wrap up this conversation looking at Mecklenburg County, looking at the chart over at the John Locke Foundation website. Things actually seem to be pretty in line for Mecklenburg County, which of course hosts the city of Charlotte.
Yeah, and that's a great point, Nick.
So of the 10 counties that I analyzed, nine of them actually did collect more money in property tax revenue than what they would have been allowed over the decade. Under the levy limit.
However, a few of them who went over the levy limit, it was only by a very small amount. And Mecklenburg was one of those counties that essentially they're right on track with a levy limit over the past decade. Had there been a levy limit in place, it would have had very little practical impact on Mecklenburg County. And I think this is a very important point because some people have. Framed levy limits as an attack on local government, but it's an important point.
Number one, that This is not a budget cut. No one's budget would actually be reduced.
However, this is not going to affect a decent bit of counties. We've seen probably about thirty percent to forty percent of counties really take advantage in the past ten years and aggressively increase their property tax collections. But then we've also seen the remaining counties, a decent bit of them, they've increased property tax revenue right at about the pace of inflation plus population.
So the point is. For those counties There will be little, very little effect on them. It'll be almost as if it's not even there. And I think that's an important point because it's not an attack on local governments, it's an attack on aggressive. um government spending And that not all governments would even feel an effect of a levy limit.
Most governments could just keep going as they were going previously, and it would be as though it's not even there. Yeah, when you compare Wake to Mecklenburg County, we talked about that $1.6 billion figure. That number is less than $67 million in Mecklenburg County. That is a huge discrepancy when you look at the state's two largest cities. Joe, you mentioned at the open that the North Carolina General Assembly, both the House and Senate have two different groups that are starting to dig into this issue of this potential issue of property taxes.
I would imagine that lawmakers are probably starting to get some calls from their constituents saying, hey, what is going on here? I just got this new bill from my county. My property taxes are up 10, 15% in just the last couple of years. And I guess that's probably got the attention of state lawmakers.
Okay. That's exactly right, Nick. Lawmakers have definitely felt some pressure from their local constituents to take some type of action in this area. And it's also true that here in North Carolina, we have very little protections in place already. And quite a few other states, they already have stuff like levy limits and assessment limits in place.
But I also think there's probably feeling a little bit more pressure as well, given that they didn't. Actually, they produce a budget last year, so they're trying to get something done, and they feel as though this is an area where they can get something done, where it's a viable. Uh type of tax reform that they can make that will not at the end of the day affect the revenues that they're bringing in. Yeah, and obviously, anytime you ask anybody, do you want to pay less taxes? Most people would, of course, say, yes, I would love to pay less each year, regardless of what tax we're talking about.
We'll, of course, keep an eye as the General Assembly makes their way back to Raleigh through the remainder of this year to see if there is any actual movement on dealing with some of these property tax concerns. Joe, there's a lot of data, a lot of numbers as you looked at these top 10 counties. Where can folks go this morning and get a full copy of this report? Yes, they can check out the report at the johnlock.org. And I also have a couple of other articles up there as well that should be easily accessible once you take a look at this one.
But this one here is focused on the top 10 most populated counties here in North Carolina and taking a comparison and how they've grown their revenue relative to a levy limit. A lot of great information and insight this morning. We appreciate the time. Joe Harris from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Good morning again.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. Continuing our coverage with some statewide news this morning, as we were joined by Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation earlier in the program, we let you know that Phil Berger, the leader of the North Carolina Senate, the representative out of Rockingham in northern Guilford County, that's the 26th Senate District here across North Carolina, has officially filed a recount request with the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
That request was made before the deadline, which was noon yesterday.
However, in the overnight hours, we learned about some additional challenges from the Berger team as he is now challenging 13 ballots in this tight race. According to the first protest filed by Berger late last night, which was filed with the North Carolina State. State Board of Elections, at least eight voters in Guilford County who were eligible, according to the Burger team, to vote in the Senate 26 district race were given ballots that did not include the contest between Berger and Page. This is from the voters themselves. The protest states: We are unable to independently confirm the ballot style actually issued to each voter because those records are uniquely within the possession, custody, and control of the Guilford County Board of Elections and the State Board of Elections.
The protest argues that if eligible voters were given incorrect ballots, they were effectively denied their constitutional right to vote in that contest. The protest then goes on to cite North Carolina law, which could allow those voters to recast their ballot if those allegations turn out to be true. The Burger campaign also has raised concerns about text messages that were sent to voters by a group called the North Carolina Election Integrity Fund, which was warning that submitting false alphadavits is a felony and accused the Burger campaign of encouraging false claims. Those were dealing with some of the arguments there in Guilford County. A couple more protests.
These ones in Rockingham County, one in which it seeks to have a provisional ballot counted after a voter reported. That she attempted twice, two different times, to update her voter registration through DMV. The County Board of Elections reported no record of the update and decided to reject her ballot during the county canvas process. A separate Rockingham County protest also centers on a voter who says that her registration wasn't updated in time. The fourth and final protest submitted by Berger seeks to remove ballots from three unaffiliated voters who requested Democrat ballots when they showed up to vote.
However, they changed their mind before actually running the ballot through the tabulator and wanted a Republican ballot instead. Those three votes were approved by the Rockingham County Board of Elections.
However, the Berger team says that those ballots, in fact, should be tossed, indicating that those voters had the ability to vote in both elections. That brings the total number of challenged ballots by Berger to 13 across both counties. Obviously, the margin for those that have been following the This race closely remains at 23 votes.
However, one of the other avenues in which the Berger campaign and team are working through some of the discrepancies, what they claim to be discrepancies in some of these numbers are the overvote and undervotes that we talked to Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation about. The state board of election has a meeting at 10 o'clock this morning in which they will likely be discussing some of these voter protests. The Guilford County Board of Elections is stated to begin their recount measures a little bit later on this morning. And the Rockingham County Board of Election has, I believe it's a 10 a.m.
scheduled start time for their re the recount for the machine recount, I should say, for the election in Rockingham County.
So it's going to be a busy couple of days across North Carolina. We'll keep you up to date with all the details right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Well, that's going to do it for a Wednesday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning of BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9, WBT. Yeah.
