From Staff Reports

As of Nov. 4 evening, ABC News and The Associated Presss still had not declared a winner in North Carolina’s presidential election.

Largely because of a massive number of absentee and provisional ballots attributed to safety concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, North Carolina’s election results were still incomplete in the race between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, which is “is extremely close and still too early to call,” according to a Nov. 4 explanation from ABC News.

 â€œTrump is only leading Biden by about 76,000 votes in North Carolina and there are still about 116,000 mail-in ballots that were requested by voters but haven’t yet been received by the board of elections or counted,” ABC News reported.

“The unofficial results so far include more than 977,000 absentee by mail cast by Nov. 2, 3.6 million ballots cast by one-stop early voting and approximately 900,000 ballots cast at Election Day precincts.”

Meanwhile, State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said during a news conference on Nov. 4, “North Carolina stopped counting votes on election night because there were no more votes to count at that time. There are also no more ballots that can be cast for election. All eligible ballots have already left the voters hands.”

The State Board will meet on Nov. 24 to certify the election, ABC News noted, which added that “absentee ballots had to be postmarked on or before Election Day and they are counted as long as they are received by the county board of elections by 5 p.m. Nov. 12.”

Further, ABC News noted, any mail-in ballot that arrived after 5 p.m. Nov. 3 did not count toward the Election Day total.

In the governor’s race with all precincts reporting, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was re-elected with 2,803,782 votes (51 percent), topping his opponent Republican Lieutenant Gov. Dan Forest, who captured 2,563,258 votes (47 percent).

The results of other statewide races of wide interest are as follows:

• Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis won 2,640,381 votes (49 percent) to top Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, who netted 2,543,693 votes (47 percent).

• Republican Mark Robinson snared 2,773,753 votes (52 percent) to top Democratic challenge Yvonne Holley, who had 2,595,868 votes (48 percent). Robinson will be North Carolina’s first African-American lieutenant governor.

• Democratic incumbent Attorney General Mark Stein won 2,684,876 votes (50 percent), just barely edging Republican challenger Jim O’Neill, who received 2,674,085 votes.

• In nearby the race for a seat on the Henderson County Board of Commissioners, Republican Daniel Andreotta won 40,013 votes (61 percent) to top Democratic challenger Debbie Rountree, who finished with 25,983 votes (39 percent).