The Dare County Board of Elections voted to certify its Canvas election results on a contested item and documented an incident report after staff flagged a one-vote discrepancy in the voter history.

Elections staff told the board the tabulator tapes and summary reports show 3,407 ballots cast across reporting groups (absentee by mail 32, provisional 2, early voting at Kill Devil Hills 684, BOE early voting 458, plus six election-day tabulator tapes) while the compiled voter-history screenshot shows 3,408 entries — a single-vote difference. “When you take those totals … you’re gonna come up with 3,407,” elections staff said, noting that the voter-history screenshot pulled from the state system showed one additional ATV entry.

The discrepancy stems from an incident in which a voter completed check-in, was given an ATV and a ballot, then returned the unmarked ballot to a ballot-station judge and left without marking it. The chief judge spoiled the blank ballot and staff created an incident report. Elections staff said the county has previously treated possession of an ATV and ballot as having begun the voting process, while a district field support specialist for the state advised that the ATV could be canceled under that office’s interpretation.

The board discussed 08 NCAC 10B .0104 (procedures for spoiled or incomplete ballots) and expressed that the regulation’s subsections leave an unresolved ambiguity about the exact moment voter intent is legally determined. “There’s an ambiguity in the code between subsection a and subsection f because it tells you when the process starts, but it doesn’t tell you at what interim phase there is a determination of voter intent,” a board member said. Elections staff agreed the code does not explicitly address every factual nuance and that the county has handled similar incidents differently in the past.

After deliberation the board agreed the incident should be recorded as an anomaly in the incident report, with an addendum noting the conflicting guidance and the need for definitive legal advice. Elections staff said they will escalate the matter to the state’s legal office and the board said it would contact the state directly to request formal counsel rather than rely on help-desk email interpretations. “I will certainly absolutely do it,” elections staff said, promising to ask for legal weigh-in when the board requests it.

Board member [speaker 3] moved that the Dare County Board of Elections certify the results as presented in the Canvas report; Randy (speaker 1) seconded the motion and the board voted to certify. The transcript does not record a roll-call tally; staff immediately prepared triplicate signatures and said they would finalize reports and send them to the state and the clerk’s office.

Staff also reviewed write-in reporting rules and said the tabulator recorded 230 write-ins that met the machine’s criteria; only names receiving five or more tabulated write-in votes will be added automatically to the state’s searchable election results. The board recessed briefly to sign the Canvas documents and then adjourned at about 12:29 p.m.

The board asked staff to add this scenario to future chief-judge training and to seek a formal legal opinion from the state to establish a uniform, county-wide practice for handling similar incidents going forward.