Control of the Virginia House of Delegates is up in the air, although Republicans currently have an edge on keeping their majority.
That’s Anna Lieder, general registrar in Alexandria. This is where she and her staff of election officials took calls from all over Tuesday night and wrote them down on a tally sheet.
“So you’re here in the office manually writing down by hand numbers on your tally sheet, correct?"
“That’s correct."
"And that creates an opportunity for error where you could literally write the wrong number, right?"
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“We could. We could write the wrong number or because we have two sets of numbers from each candidates from each precinct because we have two voting machines in each precinct you can also make a mistake here by adding those two numbers together.”
And apparently that’s exactly what happened at two precincts in Fairfax County, where election officials at the Oak Hill precinct wrote a two that should have been a three — that was one hundred extra votes. At the Bull Run precinct — yes, that’s as in the Battle of Bull Run — numbers from some other election were written on the tally sheet instead of House District 40. All that changed the morning after the election, and the numbers could change again once the provisional ballots are counted.
“So in Alexandria we had about 200 provisional ballots that we’ll be counting on Monday by the electoral board as they consider the circumstances for voters who had to cast a provisional ballot.”
And those provisional ballots could turn the tide for races that are super close — one seat in Newport News has a 13 vote margin of victory. Another seat in Stafford has an 86 vote margin of victory. That’s the one currently held by the retiring speaker of the House. In total four Democrats are considering filing recount petitions. Control of the House of Delegates is at stake, so all sides are lawyering up.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
