After elections officials spent more than 10 hours counting ballots Thursday, Roanoke Circuit Judge David Carson announced that the Roanoke mayoral election recount would stop for the night to be continued on Friday.
Around 5:45 p.m., Carson, who is overseeing the recount legal proceedings alongside two other judges, said officials were to finish the boxes of ballots they were counting and leave the city courthouse for the night. Ballot counting will resume at 7:30 a.m. and is expected to be finished around noon Friday.
Republican candidate David Bowers requested the recount after losing to his Democratic opponent, Joe Cobb, by just 59 votes. Bowers had held a slim lead on election night, but that evaporated in the following days as provisional and same-day ballots were counted.
The recount requires eight scanners, with two election officials working each scanner in courtroom four of the Roanoke City Circuit Court. Two observers, one per political party, are allowed to watch each machine. Twenty-nine boxes containing over 40,000 ballots are in the process of being counted.
Nicholas Ocampo, the city’s director of elections and general registrar, said by the end of Thursday’s counting, 24 of 29 boxes of ballots would be completed. Neither Bowers nor Cobb made a statement at the end of the day.
