RALEIGH – North Carolina election officials have selected 200 ballot groupings, two in each of the state’s 100 counties, for required hand-count audits of the U.S. Senate contest.
The State Board of Elections posted the selection file Wednesday after announcing that the drawing would take place at 12:30 p.m. The published list identifies the voting groups county election officials will examine; it does not report the results of those hand counts.
An analysis of the state’s output file found 170 Election Day precinct selections, 18 early voting site selections and 12 absentee-by-mail groupings. Each county appears twice. The file identifies both a county and a voting group, allowing residents to see which ballots were selected where they live.
For example, Alamance County’s selections are North Newlin and Central Boone precincts. Orange County’s are Hillsborough and Coker Hills. Other counties have a mix of precinct, early voting and absentee-by-mail selections rather than two Election Day locations.
The state’s advisory says county officials will count the Senate contest on ballots in the selected groups and compare those totals with the voting-machine counts. The sample audit is required by state law. Selection of the groups is a step toward that review, not a finding that machine counts are wrong.
The advisory describes a reproducible selection method using a randomly generated seed number, an input file listing eligible voting groups and software that produces the sample. The state has posted its input and output files in the public election-data folder.
The audit work comes while election officials continue reviewing ballots after Election Day. WUNC reported Wednesday that close congressional and legislative contests could remain unsettled as provisional ballots and qualifying mail ballots are considered before county canvass meetings Nov. 13.
Those additional counting procedures are separate from declaring an election-night leader. The newly posted audit list establishes which ballot groups were selected, but does not establish that an audit has been completed, that any discrepancy was found or that a recount has been ordered.
Sources
- NCSBE selection output (CSV)
- WUNC: Close contests and post-election counting
- NCSBE: Audit selection advisory
Photo Credit: Context file photograph of “I Voted” stickers in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Nov. 4, 2025, by Funknendai via Wikimedia Commons; CC0 1.0 public-domain dedication. Cropped and resized; not North Carolina ballots or the 2026 audit. NCPN logo is a separate brand mark.
Editor’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and was reviewed and fact-checked by a member of the NC Political News editorial team before publication.