Republican Bill Fletcher is refusing to concede his race for N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction to Democrat June Atkinson. Atkinson won by 8,535 votes, but Fletcher complains that 11,310 votes should be thrown out because they were illegal votes, invalidly cast and unlawfully counted. For Fletcher to pick up enough votes to win, those 11,310 votes must have been cast for Atkinson 69%-31%. If Atkinson leads among those ballots by that much, then either there's some kind of wide spread Democratic fraud - which has not been alleged - or only ballots cast in certain heavily Democratic areas are being disputed - which sounds suspiciously like Al Gore's cherry-picking recount in Florida in 2000.

So, unless Fletcher can show hard evidence of massive fraud, there's no freaking way he can win. It's not about him. It's not about Cobb. It's about doing the right thing. These men need to act like adults and accept defeat.

And the legislature needs to address the issues raised by these races expeditiously.