National: Hillary Clinton urged to call for election vote recount in battleground states | The Guardian

A growing number of academics and activists are calling for US authorities to fully audit or recount the 2016 presidential election vote in key battleground states, in case the results could have been skewed by foreign hackers. The loose coalition, which is urging Hillary Clinton’s campaign to join its fight, is preparing to deliver a report detailing its concerns to congressional committee chairs and federal authorities early next week, according to two people involved. The document, which is currently 18 pages long, focuses on concerns about the results in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. “I’m interested in verifying the vote,” said Dr Barbara Simons, an adviser to the US election assistance commission and expert on electronic voting. “We need to have post-election ballot audits.” Simons is understood to have contributed analysis to the effort but declined to characterise the precise nature of her involvement.

North Carolina: Gov. Pat McCrory wants recount in race with Roy Cooper | News & Observer

Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has formally requested a recount of votes in his close race with Democrat Roy Cooper. Two weeks after Election Day, Cooper is moving ahead with preparations to take office as governor but McCrory has sought to raise doubts about the integrity of the election. More than half of the state’s 100 counties reported final results on or before Tuesday, even as county officials awaited guidance from the State Board of Elections on how to deal with allegations from Republicans of people voting in two states, ineligible felons voting and absentee voters who died before Election Day. Those questioned ballots add up to a few hundred, not the thousands of votes by which McCrory trails. A recount would happen after all counties report final results and only if fewer than 10,000 votes continue to separate Cooper and McCrory. More than 4.69 million votes were cast in the race.

North Carolina: McCrory campaign request on election complaint review rejected – for now | News & Observer

The State Board of Elections on Sunday rejected a request from Gov. Pat McCrory’s campaign to take over election protest reviews, instead setting a 10 a.m. Tuesday meeting to set guidelines for counties to address the complaints. The McCrory campaign has been involved in filing dozens of elections protests regarding dead voters, felon voters, people voting twice and absentee ballot concerns – some of which were rejected by Republican-led county election boards on Friday. Campaign manager Russell Peck asked the state board to rule on all complaints. County elections boards must rule on the complaints first before their decision can be appealed to the State Board of Elections. In a rare “emergency” meeting on Sunday, the state board didn’t rule out the possibility of reviewing election complaints – but it left the initial responsibility with county boards.

North Carolina: Republicans Battle to Save Governor, Trailing by Whisker | The New York Times

Democrats and Republicans in this fiercely contested political battleground have regularly resorted to creative legal maneuvers and election-law changes in their efforts to wring every last vote from the state’s nearly seven million voters. But even by that standard, the disputed, hairbreadth race for governor is plowing litigious and acrimonious ground. Scrambling to save the incumbent governor, Pat McCrory, Republicans said they were pursuing protests in about half of North Carolina’s 100 counties, alleging that fraud and technical troubles had pushed the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Roy Cooper, to a statewide lead of more than 6,500 votes. But Republican-controlled county elections boards, including one here in vote-rich Durham County, turned back some of the challenges on Friday. The legal and political jockeying raised the specter of a recount, and it could ultimately climax in a political wild card: Mr. McCrory using a state law to contest the election in the state’s Republican-dominated General Assembly. “We’re supposed to have an inauguration on Jan. 7,” Theresa Kostrzewa, a Republican lobbyist, said Friday. “Are we going to have a governor? That, I think, is what most people are going to start wondering pretty soon.”

North Carolina: Roy Cooper team claims insurmountable gap over incumbent Pat McCrory | News & Observer

Roy Cooper’s election law specialist told reporters on Friday that internal calculations tell the campaign that the attorney general has an insurmountable lead over Gov. Pat McCrory. Cooper, the Democrat, has held a lead of about 5,000 votes since Election Day. That lead has increased to 7,448 votes, according to Marc Elias who spoke to reporters in a phone-in conference. He said he expects that lead to grow slightly, based on the mix of counties that have yet to report outstanding ballots. “This race has simply gotten away from Pat McCrory,” Elias said. “More North Carolinians voted for Roy Cooper than Pat McCrory, and did so by a close but significant margin. There is nothing Gov. McCrory or his legal team are going to be able to do to undo what is just basic math.” McCrory and state Republican officials have filed protests questioning voter integrity in 52 of the state’s 100 counties. The first of those counties that began deliberating those protests on Friday overwhelmingly rejected them.

North Carolina: Appeal planned after Durham County dismisses demand for hand recount | News & Observer

A series of decisions Friday by local elections boards dealt a setback to Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s hopes of challenging results that have left him trailing in his bid for re-election. Now his campaign is putting its hopes in the N.C. State Board of Elections. Protests have been filed questioning alleged irregularities in 52 of the state’s 100 counties. The first county elections boards that began deliberating those protests on Friday overwhelmingly rejected them. McCrory’s campaign on Friday evening asked the state board to take the protests out of the hands of county boards and decide the issues itself, in order to ensure consistent decisions and a quicker resolution. The state board has not yet responded. Both state and county elections boards are controlled by Republicans.

Maine: Recounts requested for legalized marijuana, school surcharge votes | The Portland Press Herald

Opponents of ballot initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana and tax the state’s highest earners to help fund public schools have submitted requests for recounts. Petitions seeking recounts were turned in Wednesday afternoon to the Secretary of State’s Office, hours before the 5 p.m. deadline. State officials must verify that at least 100 signatures on each petition came from registered voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election before a recount is scheduled. Both Question 1, which would legalize marijuana, and Question 2, which would add a 3 percent tax surcharge on individual income over $200,000, were narrowly approved. The two statewide recounts combined will cost taxpayers more than $500,000, the Secretary of State’s Office said. The marijuana question passed by 4,073 votes, 381,692-377,619, less than 1 percent, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s Office.

North Carolina: Counting is far from over for North Carolina governor’s race | Associated Press

All the counting was supposed to be all but over by Friday, but North Carolina’s too-close-to-call governor’s race remains nowhere near done, the State Board of Elections said Thursday. Election officials say delays in receiving information from the Department of Motor Vehicles are causing many of the problems. A federal judge ordered that votes of people who signed up at DMV offices must be counted unless the agency proves they refused to register. Lots of formal local challenges also are postponing final totals as state board figures late Thursday showed Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper leading McCrory by about 4,600 of the nearly 4.7 million votes already tallied. By Friday, all 100 counties were supposed to finish deciding whether to count or set aside more than 60,000 mailed-in absentee and provisional ballots statewide, unseal the voters’ choices and send updated vote totals for dozens of races to the State Board of Elections.

California: Southern California Election Officials Respond To Issa’s Allegation Of Vote Count Interference | KPBS

Registrars of voters in Southern California are defending the vote count in a tight congressional race after incumbent Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, questioned its validity. Issa is ahead of challenger Doug Applegate by two percentage points with about 20,000 more provisional ballots to be counted. In a fundraising email, Issa claimed liberals are trying to steal the election and that if his lead shrinks, they could “force the Registrars to allow thousands of illegal, unregistered voters to influence the election,” according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. In a post on Twitter, the Republican congressman asked followers, “Can you help me make sure this election isn’t stolen?” It included a link to a letter on his campaign website, but the tweet and letter have since been deleted.

New Hampshire: Recounts unlikely to change results, but get lots of attention | Union Leader

Democratic state Rep. Deborah Wheeler is no stranger to post-election recounts. She’s helped conduct many in her three terms as a representative for Northfield and parts of Franklin. But on Tuesday, she wasn’t helping to count. The 72-year-old retired tax auditor was there to watch the process in the hope that it would erase a 25-vote deficit that separated her from the winning Republican, Ryan Smith. But like most recounts, this one failed to change the result, although it did narrow Smith’s margin of victory from 25 votes to 13 (1,505-to-1,480) Smith, a 20-year-old criminal justice student at St. Anselm College, decided to run when he learned that incumbent Republican Gregory Hill was the only Republican on the ballot in a district that elects two representatives. “No one was going to fill that seat on the ticket, and I have things to say so I thought, I’ll throw my hat in the ring and see what happens,” he said as he took a step away from monitoring the counting on Wednesday at the Legislative Office Building.

North Carolina: Durham County Elections Chair: No evidence of inaccurate reporting on 94,000 votes | News & Observer

Officials have seen no evidence supporting questions raised about the accuracy of more than 94,000 votes that were counted manually on election night, Durham County Board of Elections Chairman Bill Brian said Tuesday. “We have seen no evidence to that effect,” Brian said during a Tuesday press conference. “Mr. (Thomas) Stark may have some, but we have seen no evidence to that effect.” Stark, general counsel for the state Republican Party, filed a formal protest Friday contending that the Durham County Board of Elections engaged in “malfeasance” with regard to ensuring the accuracy of votes counted Nov. 8. Durham County officials had to manually enter information after they were unable to upload data from six cards that saved information from ballot tabulators. The votes were pivotal on election night, pushing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper ahead of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, whose campaign has expressed concern about the votes. Cooper, the state’s attorney general, leads McCrory by about 5,000 votes with some absentee and provisional votes yet to be counted. McCrory can call for a recount so long as the margin between them remains less than 10,000 votes.

North Carolina: Falsified write-in votes alleged in Bladen County | News & Observer

A protest has been filed in Bladen County alleging that a handful of people may have improperly submitted hundreds of absentee ballots, while also getting paid for get-out-the-vote efforts by a community group funded by the N.C. Democratic Party. According to the protest filed by McCrae Dowless, who won election as soil and water district supervisor, the handwriting on a number of ballots and the signatures of some mail-in absentee witnesses were similar. He said the questioned ballots seem to have been cast in favor of a straight ticket of candidates and also to vote for a man named Franklin Graham, who ran a write-in campaign for soil and water district supervisor. A letter the Bladen County elections board wrote to the State Board of Elections, and attached to the complaint, raises the same concerns. While some ballots listed witnesses, few include the documentation that would be required if someone had also assisted the voters, according to the letter.

North Carolina: Could legislators decide governor race? ‘Last resort,’ House speaker says | News & Observer

House Speaker Tim Moore said in a podcast interview posted Tuesday it would be unlikely that the General Assembly would attempt to determine the outcome of the close contest between Gov. Pat McCrory and Attorney General Roy Cooper. “It is an absolute last resort for the General Assembly to be involved,” Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican, said in the interview on “What Matters in North Carolina,” a podcast on the Freedom Action Network website. There has been speculation that the computer problems that delayed counting some of the votes in Durham County on Election Day could set the stage for legislative intervention. State law allows the General Assembly to decide contested elections for the 10 Council of State offices, which includes the governor, and also for legislators. The provision has only been used once before in modern history, when lawmakers named June Atkinson state superintendent of public instruction over Bill Fletcher in 2005, in a process that took nine months to resolve. At the time, the legislature was controlled by Democrats; Atkinson was a Democrat and Fletcher was a Republican.

Maine: Opponents of legalized marijuana set to request recount, at cost of $500,000 | The Portland Press Herald

A leader of the group opposed to marijuana legalization said Monday that it will request a recount of votes on the statewide ballot question that passed by a narrow margin last week. Such a recount, involving more than 757,000 ballots, could take a month to conduct and cost the state $500,000, the Secretary of State’s Office said Monday. Mainers Protecting Our Youth and Communities, which opposed Question 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot, is circulating petitions to collect the 100 signatures needed to request a recount. Scott Gagnon, campaign manager for the group, said the petitions will be turned in to the Secretary of State’s Office before the deadline at 5 p.m. Wednesday. The unofficial tally shows 381,060 votes in support of Question 1 and 376,658 opposed, a margin of 4,402 votes, less than 1 percent, according to unofficial results collected from communities across the state by the Associated Press and Portland Press Herald. The totals include about 4,000 absentee ballots received by the state from members of the military and Mainers living overseas.

North Carolina: Durham County defends handling of 90K ballots in governor’s race | Associated Press

North Carolina’s top criminal investigations agency is looking into whether there was wrongdoing in last spring’s primary election in Durham County, the likely ground zero in the ongoing fight over last week’s still-in-doubt race for governor. A State Bureau of Investigation spokesman and Durham’s district attorney confirmed Monday that investigators have been on the case for two weeks. The bureau is investigating whether crimes were committed in the mishandling of more than 1,000 provisional ballots during the March primary elections. Some may have been counted twice and election officials presented the vote count as true when it was wrong, according to an interim report presented to the state elections board in May. The miscount didn’t affect the primary’s outcome. The state board’s completed investigation was turned over to Durham District Attorney Roger Echols, who brought in state investigators Oct. 31, bureau spokesman Shannon O’Toole said.

North Carolina: Gov. Pat McCrory claims voter irregularities in election | News & Observer

Gov. Pat McCrory, trailing in a close race for re-election behind Attorney General Roy Cooper, claims there was “malfeasance” in tabulating votes in Durham County and “irregularities” reported around the state. Cooper’s campaign said nothing improper happened in Durham, and accused McCrory of trying to undermine the election. A formal protest filed Saturday with the Durham County Board of Elections calls for a recount of disputed votes there. About 90,000 votes weren’t counted until late on Election Day. Durham officials said it was due to malfunctioning equipment that led to a backlog, and that it had no impact on the votes cast. The protest was filed by Thomas Stark, who is the general counsel for the N.C. GOP, and announced by McCrory’s campaign. McCrory’s campaign staff said on Saturday that those ballots came from at least five early voting sites and one general election site in Durham County and appear to have been tabulated from corrupted memory cards. The cards could not be properly read by the system and the computers “experienced a critical error,” according to the campaign.

North Carolina: Provisional ballots could decide North Carolina governor’s race | Associated Press

Tens of thousands of uncounted provisional ballots could decide North Carolina’s governor’s race, some which wouldn’t have been counted if the courts had upheld a Republican-backed law that limited voting access. With nearly 4.7 million ballots cast, GOP Gov. Pat McCrory trailed Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper by about 5,000 votes — even though Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr and Donald Trump secured victories by comfortable margins. McCrory was dogged throughout the campaign by his support for a law limiting LGBT rights — a prime example, according to Democrats, of the state’s rightward shift under his watch. Cooper had declared victory, though the race remained too close to call Wednesday. County boards are supposed to decide in the next several days which mailed absentee ballots and provisional votes cast during early voting or on Election Day should be added to the race totals. The trailing candidate could then ask for a recount.

National: Clinton, Trump Prepare for Possibility of Election Overtime | Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are arming up for a possible post-Election Day battle. Clinton is assembling a voter protection program that has drawn thousands of lawyers agreeing to lend their time and expertise in battleground states, though the campaign isn’t saying exactly how many or where. It is readying election observers in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona to assess any concerns — including the potential for voter intimidation — and to verify normal procedures. The Republican National Lawyers Association, which trains attorneys in battleground states and in local jurisdictions where races are expected to be close, aims to assemble 1,000 lawyers ready to monitor polls and possibly challenge election results across the country. Hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, one of Trump’s biggest backers, has sunk $500,000 into the group, its biggest donation in at least four presidential elections, Internal Revenue Service filings show. “We are fighting for open, fair and honest elections,” the association’s executive director, Michael Thielen, said in an e-mail.