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I’m not an expert nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night but I know mistakes in reporting when I see them, and one prominent North Carolina-based news outlet had plenty of them in their most recent write-up on the status of the NC Supreme Court race.

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As we’ve documented, there have been some strange twists in this race, which saw Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin up by around 10,000 votes the day after the election over his Democrat opponent, state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, only to find himself behind by 722 votes after boards of election finished their canvassing some two weeks later on 11/20 (a vote count consistent with what is on their results page as of this writing, which has a “last county submit/upload” date of 11/20).  

READ MORE: The Strange and Unacceptable Twists in the North Carolina Supreme Court Race

With the recount currently underway, here’s where things stand as of Wednesday 11/27 at 3:39 pm – which was the last update this week on the recount spreadsheet PDF provided by the BOE. 

92 of North Carolina’s 100 counties have completed their recounts, and the recount has resulted so far in Griffin netting 91 votes. This is not an insignificant number considering the closeness of the race.

But you wouldn’t know any of this if you read WRAL’s reporting on 11/27, which contained multiple factual errors that are surprising considering the veteran state government reporters who wrote the story and who are very familiar with state politics and how things go here.

We’ll start with this paragraph (I’m bolding the incorrect parts):

Before the recount, Riggs led by 625 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast. After nearly all counties had finished their recounts as of Wednesday afternoon, her lead had grown slightly to 722 votes, according to still-unofficial state election results.

Recounts sometimes lead to a handful of votes being either added to or subtracted from a candidate’s total, due to errors made by voters or by the machines that read the ballots.

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CLAIM: “Before the recount, Riggs led by 625 votes” […] “as of Wednesday afternoon, her lead had grown slightly to 722 votes, according to still-unofficial state election results.”

VERDICT: Both of these claims are false. As we previously reported, Wednesday 11/20 was when counties (belatedly) finished their canvassing. Riggs was up 722 as of that day, which again is consistent with what is currently on the state board of elections website that lists 11/20 as the last time an update was done to their site. And to repeat a point I made earlier, the recount through the Wednesday (11/27) before Thanksgiving had netted Griffin 91 votes.

Yours truly alerted one of the reporters on the story, Will Doran, to the issues with it – complete with receipts – on the Twitter/X machine but I’ve yet to receive a response. The other reporter on the story, Laura Leslie, who is WRAL’s Capitol Bureau Chief, has her tweets protected but, like other left-leaning journos, has fled to Bluesky, where she’s promoting the story there even though it contains several inaccuracies:

This is a screengrab of the recount PDF spreadsheet the BOE is periodically updating where it shows Riggs (the left column) has lost 73 votes and Griffin gained 18, which is a net gain for him of 91:

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Here’s a paragraph that tried to downplay the changes from the counties as a result of the recount, which they called “minor”:

So far, the changes discovered in this recount have been minor. Wake County’s recount added six votes for Riggs and six votes for Griffin, leading to no net change in the results. Durham County’s recount took away 14 votes for Riggs and took away 13 for Griffin, leading to a net change of one vote in Griffin’s favor. Many other counties reported no changes at all, for either candidate.

While it’s true some counties like Wake and Durham were basically even splits between Riggs and Griffin in terms of “gains/losses,” some other counties were pretty significant in Griffin’s favor, including Cabarrus, which saw Riggs gain three but Griffin 12 (net nine for him).  In Surry, Griffin gained six. In Person County, Riggs gained two and Griffin gained eight, which was a net of six for him.

Again, though the numbers are small they are significant when you take into consideration how close this race is. Why not include that information instead of making it sound like not much has changed in the race when in fact Griffin has netted 91 votes in this process so far?

What is a true statement is that the recount is not going to put him over the top. That’s what Griffin’s campaign is hoping will happen with the election protests he filed on 11/20, where he’s challenged some 60,000 votes on grounds that some either were felons serving their sentences at the time they voted, cast their votes early but died before Election Day, had incorrect/incomplete voter registration information, or didn’t include a photo ID (related to overseas absentee ballots).

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It remains to be seen how all of that will play out and whether more legal challenges will be forthcoming.  But what is a mystery is why this story from WRAL contains the factual errors it does, which does a real disservice to readers who are looking for accurate updates on the state of the race. I know this was a holiday week but there’s a big difference between taking a holiday from work and taking a holiday from reporting the facts.

RELATED–>> Report: The Politically Incestuous Relationship Between North Carolina Dems and the Local Media Continues