Virginia’s State Board of Elections on Monday certified the results of two Fredericksburg-area House of Delegates elections, despite Democrats asking the board to delay the process because 147 people voted in the wrong House district.
The elections board’s 3-0 vote to certify the results showing Republicans winning the 28th and 88th District races does not finalize the outcome. But it closes an initial, chaotic chapter in the legal battle over a close 28th District race that could decide which party controls the House after Democrats picked up at least 15 seats in a wave election on Nov. 7.
In the 28th District, Republican Bob Thomas leads Democrat Joshua Cole by just 82 votes. Democrats who appear to be on the losing end in the 28th and a handful of other tight finishes can still pursue recounts or contest the final results at the General Assembly. Under state law, recounts cannot begin until the elections board certifies the results as official.
People are also reading…
After a 50-minute closed meeting Monday afternoon to receive advice from the attorney general’s office, elections board Chairman James Alcorn said he and his colleagues can’t clean up the Fredericksburg mess on their own despite being made aware that at least 384 registered voters were assigned to the wrong voting district.
“How that happened or why it happened remains unclear. What is clear is that it did happen,” Alcorn said. “What is equally clear is that this board does not have a statutory remedy to address the irregularities.”
Democrats have a federal lawsuit pending over the voting problems in the 28th District. Last week, a judge declined the Democrats’ request for an injunction to block the elections board from certifying the results, but didn’t rule out the possibility of a special election as a way to resolve the botched votes.
Republicans had argued the elections board has a legal responsibility to accept the election results submitted by local officials and has no power to delay doing its duty for the sake of a lengthy examination of what went wrong. In a letter sent to the board Sunday, lawyers representing House Democrats said the state also has a responsibility to ensure the results are correct and urged the board not to certify the numbers.
“Doing so would be the equivalent of throwing these ballots in a box and burning them,” House Minority Leader David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville and Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a joint statement before Monday’s meeting.
If current results hold, Republicans will keep a 51-49 majority in the chamber, but Democrats hope recounts in a handful of close races could give them a 50-50 split or outright control. No recounts have been requested yet, but candidates have until Thursday to file paperwork.
Last week, the elections board certified results for the 98 other House elections and statewide races, but delayed action on the 88th and 28th Districts.
Republicans had threatened to file a legal challenge with the Supreme Court of Virginia if the board didn’t certify the Fredericksburg-area results Monday. In a statement, Del. Kirk Cox, a Colonial Heights Republican who is in line to become the next House speaker if Republicans hold the majority, applauded the board’s vote, but said he was “disappointed” it took more than a week and multiple legal nudges to get the board to act.
“With this step, we can now proceed to handling any other questions through the proper venues outlined in state law,” Cox said.
The cause of the problems in Fredericksburg has not been fully explained, in part because the registrar that oversaw the local elections office when the map was last altered died earlier this year. The confusion occurred in split precincts, where voters who live in different House districts cast their ballots at the same polling place and rely on elections officials to hand them the correct ballot.
According to the state report, 86 people who should have voted in the 28th District race cast ballots in the neighboring 88th and 2nd Districts. An additional 61 people who voted in the 28th should have voted in the 88th.
Because Virginia doesn’t have party registration and voters were casting ballots in the wrong races, the state cannot say definitively how the problems would have affected the election results.
Though the result in the 28th District is close enough for a court-supervised recount, the errors don’t appear widespread enough to have affected the two other races.
Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, won re-election in the 88th District by more than 4,000 votes. In the race for the 2nd District, an open seat due to the retirement of Del. L. Mark Dudenhefer, R-Stafford, Democrat Jennifer Carroll Foy won by more than 5,500 votes.
The 28th District is currently represented by retiring House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford.