Last updated on December 4, 2022
Election results in North Carolina were certified Tuesday afternoon, making the November election results official. The State Board of Elections on Tuesday unanimously certified the results of the 2022 general election in North Carolina.
The Board voted 5-0 to canvass the votes cast in all ballot items within the jurisdiction of the State Board and authenticate the count in every ballot item for the November 8 general election.
For Jackson County, that meant a final answer for the county’s new leadership, which experienced some confusion due to a tabulation error late on Election Night.
With the election results certified, Republican Mark Letson was officially named as Chairman of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, defeating incumbent Brian McMahan. Letson received 7,548 votes to McMahan’s 7,382 votes.
The finally tally for votes in the District 2 Commissioner seat has Republican John W. Smith defeating incumbent Boyce Deitz by 100 votes. Smith received 7,491 votes to Dietz’ 7,391.
“Canvass” means the entire process of determining that the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly, culminating in the authentication of the official election results. The State Board canvasses the votes cast in statewide, multicounty, and judicial contests and authenticates the count in every ballot item in the counties by determining that the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly.
This certification came after the 100 county boards of elections certified results at the county level and after a series of post-election audits by election officials verified the counts.
“After extremely hard work by county elections offices across North Carolina, today we made sure that the votes of 3.8 million North Carolinians counted in 2022,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections.
Certificates of election will be issued to prevailing candidates six days after the completion of the canvass, unless an election protest is pending.
After every election, elections officials conduct a series of audits and recounts, when necessary, to confirm the election results.
Findings of post-election audits are detailed in the Post-Election Audit Report for the November 8, 2022 General Election.
Put simply, the audits confirmed that results tabulated by machine are accurate and that there is no evidence of any fraud or other irregularities that could affect the outcome of a contest.
Also, county boards of elections conducted machine recounts in six close contests across the state. These recounts found the initial machine counts were accurate, with very small differences in some counts but no changes in winners. In addition to the machine recount, a partial hand-eye count in the Superior Court Judge 26B Seat 01 contest also confirmed the winner with no change in results.
“These audits and recounts once again showed that voters can trust the certified and tested voting equipment to accurately count ballots in North Carolina elections,” Brinson Bell said.
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