From the News & Observer's Kristin Collins, Todd Silberman and Jay Price, 3 top jobs await winner; Results for agriculture commissioner, schools superintendent and auditor still too close to call:

A day after the election, candidates in three Council of State races were still running the numbers, wondering who had won.

Some counties had corrections to make, and almost 75,000 provisional ballots remained uncounted, enough to throw the races for agriculture commissioner, superintendent of public instruction and state auditor into turmoil, perhaps for days.

State election officials said the final count of the provisional ballots, given to voters who recently moved into a district or have other problems that can't be resolved on Election Day, probably won't be complete until early next week.

Results in the agriculture commissioner race just seemed to grow murkier Wednesday, as changing tallies put Democrat Britt Cobb and Republican Steve Troxler in a dead heat.

The count late Wednesday showed Cobb edging Troxler by 1,538 votes. ...

In the superintendent of schools race, Bill Fletcher, a Wake County school board member, finished with a narrow edge of 3,231 votes. That would make him the first Republican elected to the job.

But Fletcher's Democratic opponent, former state school administrator June Atkinson, was not conceding. She hopes to become the first female state superintendent of schools.

"Right now, it's just wait and watch," said John Beatty, Atkinson's campaign manager.

Atkinson had hoped for a bigger lift from Democratic Gov. Mike Easley's strong showing, Beatty said. "We were hoping that his coattails would have helped." ...

The results of the rematch race for state auditor were so close that the man many named as the winner -- Republican challenger Les Merritt of Zebulon -- refused to claim victory.

He held a cushion of about 48,000 votes over three-term incumbent Ralph Campbell, a former Raleigh city councilman and a member of one of the city's most prominent families.

Still, that was less than 2 percent of the votes, and theoretically, provisional ballots could push Campbell close enough that he could seek a recount.

Merritt said that he wouldn't press things.

"Look, he's been in office for 12 years, and if the numbers (allow it), he's got every right to seek a recount," Merritt said. "I don't see anything wrong with that at all. If I'm successful, at the end of the day I'd still like to be able to work with Ralph on the transition."

The Council of State in North Carolina includes most of the Cabinet officials. It's one of those state-level things that not every state has. Perhaps to be explained in a future post; but you can think of it like any blue-ribbon panel: intended to do nothing, but do it splendidly.