CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Voters will have to wait at least one more day to find out who will oversee justice in Superior Court District 26B.
Mail-in and military ballots tightened the race between Matt Osman (R) and Kimberly Best (D).
On Monday, the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections tallied 4,625 ballots that were either mailed in up to the November 14th deadline or sent from military members overseas.
As they entered the night, there was only a 768 difference between the two candidates, with Matt Osman ahead.
After four and a half hours worth of tallied votes, that lead has closed to 77 votes that separate the two candidates.
Matt Osman – 25,982 – 50.07%
Kimberly Best – 25,905 – 49.93%
In a breakdown of the results, Matt Osman carried more votes than Best on Election Day.
Best, however, had more than one-thousand votes over Osman in the early voting results. She also carried more than double the absentee by mail-in ballots than Osman.
About a dozen Republican and Democrat party observers watched over the counting process for the mail-in and military ballots.
The race will now fall upon provisional ballots, which will be tallied on Tuesday at 5:15 p.m.
Michael Dickerson, Director of the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections, explained that most provisional ballots get thrown out due to voter error.
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He said a ballot is marked “provisional” when the voter who cast the ballot was not in the voter registration booklet that is placed at the respective precinct.
He explained, “90 percent, it is going to be, ‘I registered at DMV, I voted at the wrong precinct, I didn’t get it in the book, I moved, so you didn’t transfer me.’ All of those things are things we can take care of through this process. I can’t do that on election day because I can’t confirm you in the poll book.”
The results, officially, will not be certified until Friday.
However, if the race remains tight, it is possible a recount could happen.
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