Guilford County District 7 Democratic Primary Heads to Recount After 31-Vote Margin

Thirty-one votes separate Lisa McMillan and Walter T. Johnson III in the Democratic primary for Guilford County Board of Commissioners District 7, and Johnson has formally requested a recount to see if that margin holds.

Unofficial results show McMillan with 3,666 votes, or 50.21%, to Johnson's 3,635 votes, or 49.79%. The Guilford County Board of Elections confirmed the recount request and said officials will conduct their canvass today, Friday, March 13, before certifying results and scheduling the recount for next week.

The process will begin with all ballots running through high-speed tabulators. From there, each candidate has the option to request hand-count sampling. If that sampling reveals major changes, the State Board of Elections can call for a full hand recount. Whoever leads after all those steps will be certified as the winner.

The State Board of Elections sets the rules and oversees any recount, but Guilford County election officials will carry out the work locally. County Elections Director Charlie Collicutt said he and his staff do not expect additional ballots to arrive at this point and are currently double-checking results and handling administrative matters, including cases where voters died between casting a ballot and Election Day.

North Carolina law gives losing candidates in certain races the right to request a recount when the margin falls below 1% of total votes cast. At 0.42 percentage points, the District 7 gap sits well inside that threshold. Once the canvass is complete, candidates typically have until noon on the second business day after canvass to file a formal request, though confirmation of the exact deadline for this race should come directly from the Guilford County Board of Elections.

This is not the first time Guilford's elections office has managed a close-call recount. Collicutt previously oversaw a recount in the Greensboro City Council at-large primary after first-time candidate Carla Franklin finished just 51 votes behind T. Dianne Bellamy-Small, requesting that review to, in her words, "make sure every vote was counted."

The District 7 seat on the Guilford County Board of Commissioners represents one of the county's most direct points of local governance, making the outcome consequential well beyond the vote totals themselves. No date or time for the recount has been publicly announced as of the canvass meeting today.