JACKSONVILLE, NC - After a vote to replace the 30-year-old carpet at Sunrise Church left subcommittee and miraculously passed in the full leadership team assembly, church elders demanded a recount.

The controversial vote to replace the carpet installed during the Reagan administration narrowly passed in a leadership team meeting, 27-26, prompting church elders to cry foul and call for a recount.

"There's some funny business going on here, I tell you what," brother Clyde said. "I heard some of them no-good Russians might have been involved." He claims the move to replace the church carpet has long been a foreign plot to disrupt the church's operations and blow the budget. "The Methodists are probably behind it," he whispered.

The church has had several controversial elections, including the vote in 2000 to move announcements to the beginning of service and the vote in 2016 to stop requiring congregants to stand for the pledge of allegiance at the beginning of each service.

At publishing time, the elders had produced a box of votes against the carpet replacement that had been mysteriously left out of the original tally, causing the motion to be defeated.