The State Board of Elections has unanimously certified the results of the 2022 general election in North Carolina.
“After extremely hard work by county elections offices across North Carolina, today we made sure that the votes of 3.8 million North Carolinians counted in 2022,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections in a press release.
According to state board data released shortly after the votes were certified, more than 3.78 million people, or about 51 percent of North Carolina’s population of 7.41 million registered voters cast ballots. That’s down from the 2018 midterm election turnout of 53 percent.
While many North Carolina races were called by the media in the days following November 8th, the results are not final until after the votes are certified by each county board of elections and then the state board. The counties certified the results on November 18th.
It takes time to count the votes and update voter history.
After every election, elections officials conduct a series of audits and recounts, when necessary, to confirm the election results. The NC BOE says that county boards of elections conducted machine recounts in six close contests across the state. These recounts did not change the winners of the initial machine counts, according to the state.
“These audits and recounts once again showed that voters can trust the certified and tested voting equipment to accurately count ballots in North Carolina elections,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections in a press release.
The State Board canvasses the votes cast in statewide, multicounty, and judicial contests and authenticates the count in every ballot item in the counties by determining that the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly. Now that the counts have been finalized there will be more data available on who and how North Carolinians voted.
Certificates of election will be issued to winning candidates six days after canvass, unless an election protest is pending.
The state certification came after the 100 county boards of elections certified their results which included a series of post-election audits.
