The Voter Update | The Newsmagazine of the N.C. Center for Voter Education | www.TheVoterUpdate.com

This is a printer-friendly version of this article. To view the online version of this article, click here.

N.C. Appeals Court Runoff Heads for Recount

By Bryan Warner
Published: Dec. 8, 2010

RALEIGH - More than a month after voting ended in North Carolina, the only statewide race still without a winner looks headed for a recount.

With all counties reporting, former Judge Doug McCullough leads Judge Cressie Thigpen by about 6,000 votes in the runoff election to fill a seat on the N.C. Court of Appeals vacated by Judge Jim Wynn, who joined the federal appellate court in August.

Thigpen is requesting a recount, as permitted under state law with less than a 1 percent margin separating the two candidates. According to the State Board of Elections, a recount in the race would take one or two days.

Due to the timing of Wynn’s vacancy, a primary election could not be held for the race. Instead, all 13 candidates who filed for the seat faced off in the November general election. The contest served as the first statewide use of “instant runoff voting” in North Carolina or anywhere else in the nation.

Under the instant runoff voting system, voters were asked to rank their top three choices, in order of preference. With no candidate receiving 50 percent of the first-place votes, Thigpen and McCullough advanced to a runoff, with Thigpen leading McCullough by just under 100,000 votes.

In the runoff, county board of elections officials examined ballots that had ranked one of the 11 eliminated candidates as first to see which of the remaining two candidates they ranked as second or third, if at all.

The second- or third-place votes were added to the respective candidates' first-round count, moving McCullough ahead of Thigpen by about 6,000 votes.

While the race utilized an unfamiliar system of voting, voter drop off was less steep in this contest than other N.C. Appeals Court races in 2010 or 2008. Among the more than 2.6 million votes cast in the 2010 election, 72 percent included at least a first-place choice in this instant runoff contest, according to data from the State Board of Elections.

Of the 1.9 million ballots cast in the race, 56 percent included a first-, second- or third-place vote for either McCullough or Thigpen. About 30 percent of votes cast in the race selected the apparent winner, McCullough, as either a first, second or third choice.

Although judicial elections are nonpartisan in North Carolina, the state’s political parties weighed in on the contest. The N.C. Republican Party endorsed McCullough, while Thigpen was favored by the state Democratic Party.

Thigpen was appointed to fill the vacant Wynn seat by Gov. Bev Perdue in August. He previously served as a superior court judge.

If McCullough is certified as the winner, it would mark his return to the N.C. Court of Appeals after losing a reelection bid to Judge Cheri Beasley in 2008.

Perdue will have the opportunity to fill another vacant seat left on the N.C. Court of Appeals by Judge Barbara Jackson, who last month won a seat on the N.C. Supreme Court. That appointee would face election in 2012.