Two Cabarrus County primary races are so close that they may not be settled until elections officials count provisional ballots next week.
School board member Liz Poole led the voting Tuesday in a race to determine the Republican nominees who will compete for two seats on the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners.
But incumbent Bob Carruth led candidate Holly Blackwelder by only 46 votes for the second slot on the Republican ticket, according to unofficial returns.
There are about 690 provisional ballots, Linda Grist, director of the county elections board, said Wednesday. While most of them are Democratic ballots, 10 percent to 20 percent were cast for Republicans, Grist said.
That means there could be 70 to 140 additional votes in the commissioners race. That's enough to potentially put Blackwelder ahead of Carruth.
Blackwelder said Wednesday she knew provisional ballots were out there, but she didn't know there were enough to possibly overturn the results of her race.
"That could change things, couldn't it?" she said after a Cabarrus Neighbors reporter told her about the votes that haven't yet been counted.
Carruth said he and Blackwelder have agreed that once the provisional ballots are counted, neither will call for a ballot recount.
"Whoever wins, wins, and whoever loses, loses," he said. "We're going to approach this thing like good adults."
Elections officials use a provisional ballot when there is some question at the polls regarding a given voter's eligibility. The county Board of Elections will meet Tuesday to determine which ballots are valid and can be counted in the race.
There's also a slim chance the provisional ballots could determine the Democratic nominee who will compete against N.C. Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, who is running for re-election to his seat in the N.C. General Assembly in November.
Democratic candidate and former state legislator Jim Johnson led candidate Mike Helms by 392 votes, with all precincts (including four in Iredell County) counted in the race for the District 36 seat in the state Senate. If about 90 percent of the provisional ballots are Democratic, that means about 620 could have been cast in that race.
Thirty-one percent of Cabarrus County's registered voters participated in Tuesday's primary. That's lower than the statewide voter participation, which was about 36 percent. But it's the highest level of participation in a Cabarrus County primary election since 1996, Grist said.
The last time voter turnout was higher for a primary election was in 1994, when a school bond was on the ballot, Kannapolis was holding an election about ABC stores, and Concord residents voted on allowing liquor-by-the-drink sales in restaurants. Forty-five percent of voters participated in that election.
