The number of registered Libertarians has more than doubled.

But don't get too excited — it's only gone from 5 to 11.

As recently as Monday, the State Board of Elections reported only a handful of people registered to the political party, which was only re-recognized in late May.

Deputy elections director Johnnie Mclean said that the state board only recently got the forms together to allow people to re-register, so it will take a while before the party bounces back.

No word yet on whether Mike Munger is one of the 11. 

The labor commissioner runoff will cost between $3.5 and $5 million.

The cost will be shared by each of the 100 counties participating in the runoff between John C. Brooks and Mary Fant Donnan, though some may pay more if other local races drive turnout, said State Board of Elections deputy director Johnnie Mclean.

In previous primary runoffs, turnout has been as low as 3 percent and as high as 16 percent, though Mclean estimates it will be at the lower end.

Under state law, the runner-up may request a runoff if no candidate receives more than 40 percent of the vote. Brooks, who received 24.4 percent of the vote in a four-way race, came in second to Donnan, who received 27.5 percent.

He said he requested a runoff because it is an "educational opportunity."

"The people of North Carolina would have known nothing more about the issues in the Department of Labor than the man in the moon," he said. "The opportunity to save billions of dollars for the people of North Carolina could have gone by, just like it did four years ago."

Brooks also dismissed the idea of instant-runoff voting, in which voters' second-choice picks are counted if no candidate gets a majority. The towns of Cary and Hendersonville held instant-runoff elections last fall under a pilot program.

State auditor Les Merritt said today that the State Board of Elections had an apparent conflict of interest when it hired the spouse of a top official.

Merritt's report concerns Johnnie McLean, chief deputy director of the State Board of Elections, and her husband, who was hired in March as a temporary voting equipment employee. Merritt found that McLean was not supervising her husband, Robert McLean, and that since he was a temporary employee, state law did not specifically bar the board from hiring him.

However, the state personnel office "recommends that state agencies also attempt to avoid nepotism when hiring temporary employees," Merritt wrote. "We recommend that the Board of Elections avoid hiring related temporary employees in the future to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest."

On April 21, Robert McLean's assignment with the board ended, Gary Bartlett, executive director of the elections board, wrote in his response to Merritt's report. Bartlett wrote that the state's temporary employment agency twice told Robert McLean that he could work for the board if he didn't report to his wife.

More after the jump.

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More than 120,000 voters have registered since the end of the year.

Roughly half of the new voters have registered as Democrats, a little more than a third are unaffiliated and about 13 percent are Republicans, according to figures from the State Board of Elections.

Overall, the number of voters increased by about 2 percent to 5.7 million, Rob Christensen reports.

"It started back in late December," said Johnnie McLean, the deputy state elections director. "It's obviously due to the presidential primaries."

Barack Obama's campaign is registering voters this week on college campuses, at shopping centers, in high schools and in restaurants in an aggressive push to meet Friday's deadline to register the traditional way.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is taking a different tack. It is focusing on a new North Carolina law allowing people to register and vote simultaneously at early voting stops between April 17 and May 3.

"From an efficiency standpoint, we are going to be running one of the most aggressive voter registration efforts in North Carolina history," said Mike Trujillo, Clinton's state field director.