— The Durham Board of Elections began the recount process Saturday and still must count several thousand more ballots in order to comply with state orders to complete the process by Monday evening.

As of Sunday night, 53,000 votes had been recounted and the report said that Democrat Roy Cooper has picked up three votes while McCrory has lost one vote while the overall vote tally dropped by two.

The task is to recount about 94,000 votes and Bill Brian, chairman of the Durham Board of Elections, said everybody is on the same page in wanting to get the work done.

“Democrats, Republicans, white, black, old, young; it’s been very much a community experience,” Brian said. “We’ve closed out three of the five one-stop sites. Then we had a very long day today, but we’re feeling good about ourselves.”

Durham County officials reported the results from the six disputed sites late on Election Night because technical problems with the memory cards from the voting machines forced them to transcribe vote totals by hand.

The late votes pushed Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper ahead of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in the gubernatorial race, and the McCrory campaign and GOP officials statewide have questioned the accuracy of the tallies ever since. Cooper's lead in the race stood at about 10,250 votes on Friday.

By the time everything is said and done, Brian predicts the bipartisan teams will have clocked well over 20 hours counting votes. He said the process has been frustrating, but will be done.

“There’s never been any doubt in any of our minds because we had the tapes, we had the results and they said what they said and they still are saying pretty much what they said so we’re here tunneling through because that’s what we were ordered to do,” Brian said.

Sunday night, the Board of Elections released partial recount results for three of five early voting sites.

On Election Day, the Eno River Unitarian Fellowship, a reported 18,281 ballots were cast. The recount reported the exact same number of ballots. Election night totals showed Republican Pat McCrory had garnered 3,185 votes and Democrat Roy Cooper took in 14,752 votes. A recount reported the same number of votes for McCrory but tallied two additional votes for Cooper, bringing his total at that site to 14,754.

On election night, 18,918 ballots were reported at the Board of Elections. The recount reported the exact same number of ballots. Election night totals showed McCrory with 1,116 votes and Cooper with 17,379 votes. A recount showed that McCrory lost one vote while Cooper gained a vote.

On election night, 14,875 ballots were reported at East Regional Library. The recount reported the exact same number of ballots. Election night totals showed McCrory with 3909 votes and Cooper with 10,667 votes, and a recount verified those totals.