Tight elections in North Carolina may not be settled until Nov. 12, with potentially more than 150,000 votes still to be counted in the state.

That number includes 116,000 absentee ballots that have not yet been returned and another 40,000 provisional ballots that counties are still researching.

As of Thursday morning, the unofficial count in North Carolina’s presidential election put President Donald Trump ahead by 76,701 votes. That’s a little more than 1%.

Despite lawsuits already being filed and calls from the president to stop vote counts in other swing states, the North Carolina GOP is being patient while the process plays out.

Even with the uncounted ballots, Joe Biden would have a very tough time overcoming Trump’s lead in the North Carolina.

“We feel confident with where we are,” state Republican Party spokesman Tim Wittington said Thursday morning.

“This is very much the normal process that most people don’t normally pay attention to,” he said.

But during a press conference Thursday afternoon, NC GOP Chair Michael Whatley called on the State Board of Elections to release more data to show how many of those outstanding absentee ballots are associated with voters who cast ballots on Election Day. That number would be lower than 116,000 and could put North Carolina over the top and into the Trump win column.

"We know Donald Trump carried North Carolina," Whatley said in front of the Mecklenburg Board of Elections Thursday. "We also delivered the votes to send Thom Tillis back to the Senate."

Whatley called on the State Board of Elections to be more transparent with all the voter data they have. "They can give us an accurate number," he said, so media organizations can call winners for the Senate and presidential races in North Carolina.

Most county boards of elections will meet Nov. 12 to count any remaining mail-in ballots and the certified provisional ballots.

Many of the ballots, both absentee and provisional, remaining to be counted are in largely urban counties like Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford and Forsyth. But there are more suburban and rural counties, like Robeson, Iredell and Gaston, with potentially thousands of ballots left to be counted.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month extended the deadline for absentee ballots to be received by mail — the same deadline given to overseas military voters. Mail-in ballots had to be postmarked by Election Day.

In the closely watched race for U.S. Senate, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is up by 96,707, almost 2%, over Democrat Cal Cunningham.

Some races are even closer. Democratic incumbent Josh Stein is up by a little more than 10,000 votes over Republican challenger Jim O'Neill in the race for state Attorney General.

In the race for chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Republican Paul Newby has a lead of just 3,742 over Democrat Cheri Beasley.

Turnout broke recent records in North Carolina’s 2020 General Election, with more than 74% of registered voters in the state casting ballots this fall. The number of absentee ballots broke records this year as people voted by mail or dropping off their ballots to avoid possible exposure to the coronavirus.

“Individual candidate choices may vary, but nobody can say that democracy didn’t happen in North Carolina,” State Board of Elections Chair Damon Circosta said Thursday.

By law, county canvas, when counties finalize their vote counts, comes 10 days after an election. Then the state board of elections will meet to certify the result three weeks after the election on Nov. 24.

“That’s how we’ve done it in North Carolina for a long, long time,” Circosta said in an interview Thursday with Spectrum News 1. “We use this time to make sure we get the count right.”

The post-election vote certification process doesn’t normally get attention because races typically don’t come down to the number of absentee and provisional ballots that officials have to deal with after the fireworks of election night.

Wittington, with the state GOP, likened the process to “watching paint dry” as county election staff sift through the remaining ballots.

He said North Carolina’s Republican Party is confident in the process used by the state and the counties. The only thing he’d worry about is if the process were changed at all.

Wittington said he has not heard of any potential legal action so far around North Carolina's vote count process.

“All we want is a fair and transparent process,” he said. And so far, he said, he feels like that’s what’s happening in North Carolina.