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Berry victory nearly sure
Recount will start Wednesday for Davis-Allred race
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Published: November 18, 2008
Mary Fant Donnan of Winston-Salem has fallen short of the votes she needed to ask for a recount in a close contest with incumbent Cherie Berry for state commissioner of labor, a state elections official said.
State results won't be certified until Nov. 25, but with all the votes in and counted, Berry has amassed a winning margin of almost 50,000 votes. Johnnie McLean, the state's deputy director of elections, said that Donnan had to get within 10,000 votes of Berry to have the right to ask for a recount.
Meanwhile, local elections officials plan to start their recount Wednesday in the close contest between incumbent Judge Chester Davis and challenger Amy Allred.
In the statewide race for commissioner of labor, final but unofficial results showed Berry with 2,065,035 votes, or 50.61 percent of the vote, and Donnan with 2,015,347 votes, or 49.39 percent.
Donnan said that her campaign succeeded in raising some important issues, such as the cost of illness and injuries, and the condition of working families and workplaces today.
The need to "help workers and working families adapt for the 21st century … is what people are talking about right now," Donnan said. She said she would offer Berry congratulations on her re-election.
Berry will be starting her third term as labor commissioner.
"I figured it was going to be very close," Berry said. "I was very grateful for the outcome."
In Forsyth County, Davis leads Allred for the district court judgeship by 818 votes out of 109,452 votes cast.
On Friday, Allred called for a recount in the contest, after local elections officials completed the counting of the last remaining ballots in the contest.
The final tally showed Davis with 50.37 percent of the vote, while Allred had 49.63 percent. Under state law, Allred had the right to demand a recount because the tally did not give Davis a lead of at least 1 percent.
Rob Coffman, the director of elections in Forsyth County, lowered his estimate yesterday for the cost of doing a recount. Coffman said it would probably take no more than $10,000 to $12,000 to carry out the recount, down from his earlier estimate of $25,000. On the other hand, the county could spend another $10,000 doing a second recount if Allred demands that after the first recount, Coffman said.
The elections board will start the recount at 1 p.m. Wednesday. Coffman said he hopes to have the recount done sometime Thursday, although counting will continue Friday if necessary.
Coffman said that a high-speed ballot-counter will be used to process about 87,000 optical-scan ballots that were cast by voters on Election Day or by absentee ballot.
The results from that count will be added to figures taken from data cards used to record about 80,000 votes that were cast by computer during the early-voting period.
Coffman said it is extremely unlikely that the recount will change the outcome of the judicial election.
Allred can ask for a second recount after the first one is finished, and Davis could ask for a second recount if the result were to be altered by the first recount.
In a second recount, the county would hand-count the ballots from four precincts and determine whether the results are different enough from the previous count to possibly change the outcome of the race if all the ballots were counted.
If so, the state board of elections could order a third recount of all the paper ballots cast in the election.
■ Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.com.
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