Just 14 votes separate second-, third-place finishers for second city council seat
In the week since last Tuesday’s municipal elections, local elections officials have gotten a clearer sense of the scale of this off-year rush to the polls.
In the meantime, a close-run city council contest in Graham has raised the possibility that a recount could postpone the final results for the second of two council seats that were up for grabs in this municipality.
According to the N.C. Board of Elections, a total of 13,654 voters in Alamance County took part in last week’s elections. This turnout, which amounts to 18.29 percent of the registered voters in the county’s cities and towns, is even higher than the record-setting showing in 2021, when another set of closely-watched municipal races brought out 12,670 voters, or 18.23 percent of the eligible electorate in Alamance County.
Among the races that saw the highest participation was the contest for Burlington’s mayor, which saw second-time challenger Beth Kennett overcome the city’s former mayor and current councilmember Ronnie Wall. A total of 7,909 people ultimately weighed in on this competition from areas of Burlington in both Alamance and Guilford counties. This figure is only a little bit higher, however, than the 7,891 who took part in the equally competitive mayor’s race from 2021.
Another hot ticket this year was the contest for Graham’s mayor between incumbent Jennifer Talley and challenger Chelsea Glen Dickey. Dickey went on to win a majority of the 2,397 entries that were cast in this contest – a substantial increase in turnout from the 1,523 who went to the polls when Talley first won the mayor’s seat in 2021.
The current results from last Tuesday’s election are slightly different from those that the local elections office had posted a few hours after the polls closed that evening.
According to the county’s elections director Dawn Hurdle, the latest figures also include a few provisional ballots that were cast by voters who showed up at the wrong precincts on Election Day but were later found to be eligible to vote for the offices that were up for grabs in those precincts. Hurdle acknowledged that there were fairly few of these provisional votes added into the final tally.
“Because there were so few of them,” she added, “they were comingled with the early voting turnout to protect the secrecy of the ballots.”
Hurdle noted that the results of last Tuesday’s elections won’t be declared official until Friday when the local board of elections conducts a process called “canvassing” to double check the accuracy of the vote count. Yet, even then, the final numbers could remain up in the air due to the tight margin between two of the candidates for Graham’s city council, which had a pair of regular council seats on the ballot this year.
According to the current vote, a difference of just 14 votes currently separates the second-place finisher Jim Young from the third-place contender Randy Phillips. Given the total number of ballots cast in this contest, Phillips’ 25.28 percent share of the vote falls close enough to Young’s 25.61 percent to make him eligible to request a recount under North Carolina state law.
In the Village of Alamance, which had three seats available on its board of aldermen, Dale Hunt beat out Philip Cheap by an even narrower margin of 2 votes. Hurdle nevertheless conceded that the formula which the state uses to determine recount eligibility doesn’t permit Cheap to call for a recount.
Hurdle admitted that her office has been in touch with Randy Phillips since he found himself among the runners up in the race for Graham’s city council. She nevertheless stressed that the would-be council member has yet to indicate whether he’ll formally challenge the election’s results.
“He has never stated that he’s going to call for a recount,” she said, “and the deadline to do so is next Monday at 5:00 p.m.”
