In his unsuccessful quest to overcome his deficit to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, state Senate leader Phil Berger filed four election protests challenging the ballots of 13 voters (eight in Guilford County and five in Rockingham).
One of his protests of the March 3 GOP primary argued that at least eight eligible voters in Senate District 26 may have received ballots that wrongly excluded the Page-Berger race. Berger’s campaign didn’t name the people who might have gotten an incorrect ballot but said several of them claimed to have voted early.
While Berger ultimately conceded defeat before the counties held evidentiary hearings on the protests, election officials kept checking out some of his complaints. In a report recently provided to the State Board of Elections and obtained by The Assembly, Guilford County’s election director pushed back on the allegation that some people got an incorrect ballot.
“The irregularities noted in the protest allegations are highly unlikely to have occurred at the Guilford County early voting sites,” Charlie Collicutt wrote.
Collicutt said he reached that conclusion because there were no ballot distribution errors identified during the canvassing period—the time after Election Day when the board determines that votes have been counted correctly—or in a precinct-level analysis of early voting ballots.
Representatives for Berger didn’t respond to a request for comment.