But later that day, Durham received the formal order for the recount from the state board. The NCSBE demanded that Durham County produce a plan to recount the votes by Friday at noon, and to have the count finished by 7 p.m. on Monday. Thursday night, the Durham County board announced an emergency meeting for first thing Friday morning.

Brian is a dry-humored, burly, white-bearded man with a knack for expressive faces—imagine a sardonic Santa. Friday, he was expressing annoyance, complaining about what he called an “unreasonable” order from the state board. When the board emerged from a closed session, Brian announced that it was requesting an extension of the deadline for the recount to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, and asking for an emergency state board hearing to grant it.

Brian then explained the litany of complications attending the state board’s order. In order to count the ballots, the county is supposed to have teams of two supervising each voting machine used to recount votes, and each team is ideally comprised of one Democrat and one Republican. The board was finalizing a plan to use 26 machines, so that means they needed 52 people—52 people who would work long shifts the entire weekend for the princely sum of $13 per hour. Even if they were able to find full crews, given an estimated 13 seconds per ballot, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it would take around 13 hours to count all of the ballots.

So far, so good. But Durham County first has to get employees of the company that makes the voting machines to certify them. Brian had also read in local media that he was supposed to appear at a state board meeting on Saturday, though he’d received no notice. As a result, the board expected that they could start counting no sooner than Sunday morning. Even then, 13 hours would put the board comfortably ahead of 7 p.m. Monday, right?

Well, no. Because the NCSBE had ordered Durham County to count not just the governor’s race but every race, employees would then have to tally write-in votes for every seat, down to soil-and-water commissioner separately. Brian estimated that would take another 36 hours.

“Somebody always has a great idea, oh, we’ll just bring in new machines,” Brian said. But he rejected that, too: For every new machine, the board would have to find a new pair of workers—one Democrat, one Republican—background-check them, and pay them. (Brian semi-sarcastically invited the members of the state board to come chip in, pointing out that would guarantee at least three Republicans and two Democrats.) Even if there were plenty of applicants, it did not appear that the board of elections could plug in all 26 machines at its building without overloading the building’s circuits; electricians scurried around the room during the conversation trying to test the system. The board couldn’t just move the machines to another county building, though, because then they’d have to come up with a security plan for moving the ballots and locking them up overnight. That, of course, would require more money.