Berger’s Election Protest Collapses Under Scrutiny as Officials Find No Evidence of Ballot Mix-Up

Phil Berger, the powerful North Carolina state Senate leader, tried to overturn his narrow primary defeat by alleging serious election irregularities — specifically, that some voters were handed ballots for the wrong Senate district. His protest threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the entire election process in his district, which includes Rockingham County and part of Guilford County.

Berger’s campaign claimed that at least eight voters in Guilford County received ballots missing the Berger-Page race, potentially disenfranchising them. The complaint targeted early voting sites and suggested the problem could be more widespread. But Berger never named the voters involved, and his allegations rested on shaky ground.

Despite Berger dropping his protest after recounts upheld his opponent Sam Page’s victory, Guilford County Elections Director Charlie Collicutt pressed ahead with an investigation. In a memo obtained by WRAL, Collicutt detailed how the county’s ballot handling system uses barcodes scanned by poll workers to ensure voters receive the correct ballot style. A voice prompt confirms the match before the ballot is handed out.

Collicutt found no evidence a single voter got the wrong ballot. He verified that the number of ballots cast including the Berger-Page race exactly matched the number of voters eligible for that contest. To be absolutely certain, he hand-sorted ballots by precinct group in the 30 days following the election, a process that further confirmed the integrity of the ballot distribution.

While acknowledging human error is always possible, Collicutt concluded that the “irregularities noted in the protest allegations are highly unlikely to have occurred” at Guilford County early voting sites. Other smaller complaints Berger filed were not addressed in the memo.

This episode exposes a familiar pattern: election denialism used as a tool to cast doubt on democratic processes without credible evidence. Berger’s failure to substantiate his claims underscores the robustness of election safeguards, even as some politicians seek to weaponize baseless allegations for political gain.

Only Clowns Are Orange will continue to track and expose these efforts to undermine democracy under the guise of election integrity. When leaders like Berger cast aspersions without proof, it erodes public trust and threatens the foundations of our electoral system.