Recount set for Monday

Published 8:41 pm Saturday, November 24, 2012

In Beaufort County, the recount in the race for the District 1 seat in the state Senate begins at 9 a.m. Monday.
The local recount takes place in the Beaufort County Board of Elections on Highland Drive.
Republican Bill Cook, currently representing District 6 in the state House and a Beaufort County resident, has a 32-vote lead over incumbent Sen. Stan Cook, according to the N.C. State Board of Elections’ website. Cook, a Democrat from Dare County, on Monday filed the paperwork seeking a recount.
“We are expecting that the recount will take most of the day. Observers are welcome but cannot disrupt the recounting process. We will have multiple machines running in our lobby and observers should have easy access in order to visually observe the process at each machine,” wrote Beaufort County Elections Director Kellie Harris Hopkins in an email.
Each candidate plans to have observers at as many boards of elctions in the district as possible.
The boards of elections in Hyde, Dare, Camden, Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Gates counties will also conduct recounts. Recounts in Pasquotank and Perquimans counties begin at 8 a.m. Monday. Recounts in Camden and Dare counties begin at 9 a.m. Monday. Recounts in Gates and Hyde counties begin at 10 a.m. Monday. The recount in Currituck County begins at 8:30 a.m. Monday.
The State Board of Election’s website shows 43,743 votes for Cook and 43,711 votes for White, a difference of less than 1 percent. Before ballot canvassing Nov. 16, unofficial vote totals from Election Day had White with a lead over Cook.

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.