Nepal: Opposition supporters held in pre-poll violence | BBC

At least 28 people have been arrested in Nepal following a second day of opposition-led protests, Home Minister Madhav Ghimire has told the BBC. He said that they are being held either for attempting to enforce a transport strike on Tuesday or for being involved in violent activities. On Monday night about 40 bus passengers narrowly escaped being burnt to death. Their vehicle was set on fire by protesters opposed to elections next week, local media reported. Several other buses throughout the country were attacked throughout Tuesday. The attacks were all staged by people opposed to the vote on 19 November, authorities say. The opposition has denied it is responsible for all the attacks.

Maldives: Protests Over Delay of Election in Maldives | New York Times

Political turmoil deepened in the Maldives on Monday as the police clashed with protesters after a third attempt to hold a presidential election was thrown off course by a court order. The sitting president, Mohammed Waheed Hassan, said late Sunday that he would not leave office at midnight, when his term was to end under the country’s Constitution. He said that since no one had been elected to succeed him, he would stay on until Nov. 16, the Supreme Court’s proposed date for a runoff between the two leading candidates. “The Supreme Court has decided the government will continue, instead of going into a constitutional void,” Mr. Hassan said, according to Reuters. Hundreds of opposition supporters had gathered on the street before his announcement, calling on him to step down, and members of the security forces in riot gear used pepper spray and batons to disperse the crowd, witnesses said.

Editorials: U.S. elections are still awful. We should fix that. | Washington Post

Over in Virginia today, Democrat Mark Herring today moved into the lead in the Attorney General election over Republican Mark Obenshain by exactly 100 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast. Seems that one precinct in Fairfax forgot to count one of the machines, and once that was found and included, Obenshain’s previous 17 vote lead was reversed. Anyone who has been following this — and I highly recommend Dave Wasserman on Twitter for blow-by-blow, or, rather, ballot-by-ballot, updates — knows that this could reverse again before it’s done. The twists and turns are highly entertaining but hardly something to be proud of. Election law expert Rick Hasen makes the right point: “[E]lections are always this messy. We just never had Twitter before to demonstrate that in real time” (see also Ed Kilgore, who makes the point that we don’t usually care about missing ballot boxes and uncounted machines unless the count is very close).

Editorials: Low-Stress Voting | New York Times

Voting should be easy, convenient and efficient — no lines, and no panic about choosing between voting or being late to work. With that in mind, the Brennan Center for Justice recommends that New York and other states with outdated election schedules provide for a two-week voting period instead of cramming it all into one day. At least 32 states and the District of Columbia offer some form of early voting, and apparently voters like it a lot. As one former Nevada election official told the Brennan Center analysts, “Early voters are happy voters, and Election Day voters are grumpy voters.” The center’s survey found that early voting also means shorter lines, better performance by poll workers and more time to fix broken machines or other problems.

Colorado: So far, so good for mail balloting in Colorado | The Denver Post

Back in April when a new election law was making its way through the legislature, we expressed doubts about whether there’d be time by Election Day to prepare the underlying technology. So we’ve got to hand it to all involved in last week’s election: It went as smoothly as anyone could have hoped, even with the bells and whistles of same-day registration, universal mail ballots and ballots sent to inactive voters. Next year’s midterm election, which features contests for U.S. Senate and governor, will of course attract more voters and pose a bigger challenge. But nothing in this year’s experience suggests the system won’t be ready. It is now remarkably easy to vote in Colorado — even easier than in 2012, when it was already a breeze. And that’s a good thing, even if the mechanism — paper ballots and stamps — seems remarkably retro in this golden age of electronic communication.

New Jersey: Atlantic County elections board to check ballots | Philadelphia Inquirer

The Atlantic County Board of Elections will examine provisional ballots Tuesday afternoon after a weekend in which Democrats accused Republicans of improperly canvassing voters who filed those ballots. Republicans, meanwhile, launched allegations of their own Monday, with the county Republican chair asking the state attorney general to investigate Democrats he said had improperly signed up voters for mail-in ballots. Two races hang in the balance of the provisionals – the Atlantic City mayor’s race, in which Republican Don Guardian holds a 247-vote lead over incumbent Democrat Lorenzo Langford, and the First District Assembly race, in which Republican incumbent John Amodeo holds a 287-vote lead over Democrat Vince Mazzeo, the Northfield mayor and owner of a fruit and vegetable store. There were 1,164 provisionals submitted in the district, 518 of them in Atlantic City. Provisionals are issued when a voter’s registration cannot be verified or, more frequently, when the rolls indicate a request for a mail-in vote.

Voting Blogs: Modern Obstacles to Voting: Oregon’s Failed Attempt at Automatic Voter Registration | State of Elections

As much as we focus on getting out the vote for each election, the first step in voting usually takes place long before election day. Throughout the United States, citizens must register before they are allowed to vote.  Though some states allow same-day registration, most states require that voters register in advance of an election. Advance registration makes voting a multi-step process and is widely considered to be a barrier to voter access. Earlier this year, the Oregon came close to being the first state in the nation to eliminate this obstacle.  Oregon’s House Bill 3521 proposed to authorize the state to automatically register voters based upon drivers’ license data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown estimated that this measure could add 500,000 new voters to the state’s voter registration rolls. Currently, voter registration ends 21 days before an election in Oregon. This means that non-registered, but eligible, voters who become interested in the election in the period between the registration deadline and election day are not allowed to vote.

Texas: Comal County will seek a recount over election oddities | San Antonio Express-News

Comal County wants to recount Tuesday’s ballots by hand to resolve problems with both the initial election results from electronic voting machines and the revised tallies those machines produced Wednesday. The revised numbers didn’t change the outcome of any race. Confidence in them, though, plummeted this week because they indicate 649 ballots were cast in the contest for Place 3 on the Schertz City Council, despite only 540 voters being registered in the part of the town that’s in Comal County, officials said. County Judge Sherman Krause conferred with the machine vendor, Election Systems & Software, and the secretary of state’s office. The balloting included three at-large council races in Schertz, a Comal Independent School District bond election and a contested seat on the Cibolo Municipal Authority board. An audit of all 179 voting machines Wednesday showed 16,101 votes were cast countywide, not the 13,686 reported Tuesday night. The Schertz numbers didn’t shrink, they grew.

Virginia: Back and Forth in Undecided Virginia Attorney General Race | New York Times

In the week since Election Day, the lead in Virginia’s razor-thin, still undecided attorney general’s race has seesawed. First the Democrat, Mark R. Herring, was up by 32. Then the Republican, Mark D. Obenshain, went ahead by 55 as of Saturday night. He was ahead by 17 Sunday night. On Monday, after the discovery of a voting machine in Richmond that apparently had not been counted, Mr. Herring retook the lead by 117 votes in a race with 2.2 million ballots cast. The final results, almost certainly headed to a recount that could take until late December, will determine if Democrats made a clean sweep of statewide offices after claiming the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s races last week, or a Republican will fill the job that has often been a steppingstone to the governor’s office. The count has fluctuated as local election boards review the ballots first reported after the polls closed Nov. 5, as well as provisional ballots sealed in green envelopes. Local city and county boards have until midnight Tuesday to certify their results.

Virginia: Attorney General race: Herring takes lead, with a recount appearing likely | The Washington Post

Democratic state Sen. Mark R. Herring took the lead in the extraordinarily tight Virginia attorney general race Monday evening, after he picked up more than 100 previously uncounted votes in Richmond. Herring had started the day trailing his Republican opponent, state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (Harrisonburg), by a mere 17 votes out of 2.2 million cast. But as jurisdictions across the state continued to scrub their vote counts, the State Board of Elections showed Herring with a 117-vote lead late Monday. Lawyers from both parties have descended on elections offices in Fairfax County and Richmond. Meanwhile, the campaigns said they were cautiously optimistic but were bracing for a long, drawn-out battle, which appears almost certainly headed to a recount and could seesaw again. “We’re always excited to see the movement go to our favor, and we’re just going to make sure over the next few weeks and however long this plays out that every single vote counts,” said Ashley Bauman, press secretary for the Democratic Party of Virginia. “Because I think in the end, we feel confident that our candidate will be on the winning side.”

Virginia: Extremely close Virginia race once again highlights election errors | Los Angeles Times

An overlooked voting machine, a fight over rules, faulty counts – the almost-impossibly close race for attorney general in Virginia once again has highlighted the errors that slip into U.S. elections. As of Monday morning, only 17 votes – out of more than 2 million cast – separated the two candidates in the race to become the state’s chief legal officer, making the contest one of the closest statewide races in U.S. history. For Virginians, the race – which features two state senators, Republican Mark Obenshain and Democrat Mark Herring – matters in part because the attorney general’s job often provides a stepping stone to the governor’s mansion. People outside of Virginia may be more interested in the proof that 13 years after the contested presidential balloting in Florida, U.S. elections remain rife with small, but sometimes critical, mistakes. Unlike Florida in 2000, however, the effort to correct the errors in the Virginia race has been eagerly watched over – and in some cases spurred on – by a small but eager corps of election devotees who have pored over preliminary vote numbers available on the Internet looking for anomalies and trumpeting their discoveries on Twitter.

Editorials: Virginia attorney general’s race: How Democrats could win | Rick Hasen/Slate

The race for Virginia’s attorney general is about as close as it gets in a statewide race: At the moment, about 100 votes separate the two candidates out of 2.2 million votes cast. When I started writing this article, Republican Mark Obenshain was leading Democrat Mark Herring, but that’s now reversed. County election boards are checking their math and deciding which provisional ballots to count. It is anyone’s guess who will be ahead when certification comes Tuesday night. In the meantime, Democrats are up in arms over what they see as a new rule the Republican-dominated state elections board put in place last Friday to make it harder to count provisional ballots in Democrat-leaning Fairfax County. Unless Herring builds up a larger lead, Democrats’ best hope for winning the attorney general’s race probably lies in federal court, and the results there are uncertain and may take a very long time to work out. Any time a race is this close you can expect partisans and political junkies to study every discretionary decision about which votes to count and how decisions get made, a process that has only intensified through crowdsourcing of election results on Twitter. The big fight this time around is over the rules for counting provisional ballots—ballots not counted on Election Day because there was some issue with them. For example, a military voter who had an absentee ballot sent overseas might have returned home before it arrived and tried to cast an in-person ballot at the precinct. In that case, election officials need to make sure the absentee ballot was never counted.

Voting Blogs: Democratic Candidate Takes Lead in Razor-Thin Virginia Attorney General Tally | BradBlog

For the first time since the bulk of votes were tallied in Virginia on Election Night last Tuesday, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, state Sen. Mark Herring appears to now have taken the lead over Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain in the razor-thin results of more than 2.2 million votes cast. Herring just barely leap-frogged Obenshain’s totals on Monday afternoon after tallies from a voting machine in the city of Richmond — the results of which had been previously missing from official tallies since Election Night — were added to the running totals. The addition of 190 votes from electronic voting machine #3791, plus a few other votes from seven other precincts re-reviewed by Richmond City’s Electoral Board on Monday, resulted in what now appears to be a 115 vote lead for Herring over Obenshain. While the results posted by State Board of Elections (SBE) do not yet reflect that change in the state tally (showing, instead, a 17 vote lead for Obenshain for now), a number of election experts following and closely documenting the post-election canvassing and correction of vote tallies from across the state have confirmed Herring’s new lead. Those experts have been consistently and accurately ahead of the SBE in reporting results in many cases over the past week.

Editorials: GOP tinkering once again with Wisconsin’s voting laws | Journal Sentinel

Republican legislators are still trying to restrict voting, and voters across Wisconsin should tell them to stop. GOP bills would revamp the state’s misguided voter ID law — for the worse — and restrict access to early voting. These measures are more about politics than policy, more about power than the common good. The voter ID bill would allow citizens to vote if they don’t have a photo identification as long as they sign affidavits stating they are poor and couldn’t get an ID without paying for one, had a religious objection to being photographed or could not get the documentation they needed to get an ID. The ballots would be marked and could be thrown out later in a challenge. The bill is the Republican answer to complaints and lawsuits challenging the original bill requiring a photo ID.

Australia: Investigation into missing votes | Sky News Australia

Former federal police commissioner Mick Keelty is already convinced the missing votes in the West Australian Senate election materially affected the result, but says it’s unlikely their disappearance was caused by corruption. He has also revealed electoral workers in other states have also alleged that the issue of disappearing votes has been commonplace for years. Mr Keelty arrived in Perth on Monday to continue his inquiry into how electoral bosses lost 1370 votes for the September 7 federal poll from Bunbury East, Henley Brook, Mount Helena and Wundowie. The modelling of the missing votes suggest the margin of victory in the senate could have been one vote, which would have been the closest result in the history of Senate elections. Initial interviews carried out by Mr Keelty suggests the five boxes of missing ballots disappeared sometime between the day after the election and the recount beginning some weeks later. He has said while corruption was unlikely, it had not been ruled out.

Kosovo: Unfree And Unfair In Northern Kosovo | Eurasia Review

The municipal elections in Kosovo on were not really local, and come down to two very different stories depending on whether one looks at the Serb-held northern region or the rest of the country. These were not ordinary elections: they were meant to mark a peaceful transfer of power over northern Kosovo, from Serbia to the Kosovo government in Pristina. Their failure is a serious warning sign. The municipal elections in Kosovo on 3 November were not really local, and come down to two very different stories depending on whether one looks at the Serb-held northern region or the rest of the country. In the government-controlled south, Election Day was inspirational as all communities turned out heavily and peacefully. North of the Ibar river, the elections were tragic, with hubris and assorted other flaws leading to a day ending in violence and confusion. These were not ordinary elections: they were meant to mark a peaceful transfer of power over northern Kosovo, from Serbia to the Kosovo government in Pristina. Their failure is a serious warning sign.

Nepal: Anti-election strike shuts down Nepal | GlobalPost

A general strike aimed at disrupting next week’s parliamentary elections shut down Nepal on Monday, leaving businesses and educational institutions completely shuttered. The strike was called by the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist and its 32 small allies, which have announced a boycott of the Nov. 19 Constituent Assembly elections and a nationwide transportation strike from Tuesday until election day. The CPN-Maoist is dominated by communists who split away from their almost identically named mother party — the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) — last year.

Editorials: U.S. Elections Face A Crossroads On Rights And Technology | Tammy Patrick/Forbes

Most Americans believe that voting is their right, like freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But the right to vote doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. Americans have historically faced legal obstacles to voting based on race, property ownership, gender, or age, while others were limited based on procedural confines such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Some of these restrictions were statutory. Others were administrative and further defined by court decisions and opinions. For example, here in Arizona, Native Americans did not get the right to vote until 1948 through a court case challenging a 1928 decision that denied that ability. Regardless of when or how certain groups have won enfranchisement, election administrators, voters, and advocates need to consider how technology can be an empowering force to ensure eligible voters have easy access to the process.

Editorials: Strict voter ID laws stop voters, not fraud | The Courier-Journal

Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer said recently that if Democrats want to pass a constitutional amendment that would automatically restore the voting rights of felons, they’ll have to agree to a strict new law that would require citizens to present voter IDs when voting. Why screw up perfectly good legislation like House Bill 70, which would allow non-violent felons to vote once they’ve served their sentences, with a bad bill that is anti-democratic (notice the small “d”) and potentially racist. We’ve yet to see exactly what Mr. Thayer, R-Georgetown, has in mind, but the bills pushed across the nation in recent years to make it harder to vote — all in the name of a bogeyman called vote fraud — are universally bad. Take for instance, Texas, where former U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright was at first refused a voter identification card last weekend when his expired driver’s license and Texas Christian University faculty card were deemed insufficient to prove his identity. He had to later provide a birth certificate to prove he was entitled to vote — which he has been doing in Texas for longer than most of us have been alive.

Alabama: State considers creating election commission | The Sun Herald

Alabama legislators who have been studying state election laws say there’s a problem: Candidates for state offices have to report their contributions and expenditures to the secretary of state, but little is being done to make sure the reports are filed accurately. The solution could be to create a small state agency similar to the Federal Elections Commission. Since taking control of the Legislature in 2010, Republicans have enacted major changes in Alabama’s election laws, including requiring candidates for state offices to disclose their contributions more frequently and to file them electronically to make it easier for voters to search the donations. State law requires candidates to file their reports with the secretary of state, but that office is simply a collector of the reports. And that’s where a problem exists, said Republican Sen. Bryan Taylor, of Prattville. “There was nobody charged with monitoring campaign reports,” said Taylor, chairman of the Legislature’s Interim Study Committee on Campaign Finance Reform.

Minnesota: Online voter registration spurs lawsuit | Minnesota Daily

Nearly 1,500 Minnesotans used Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s new online voter registration system last month, but the program’s legitimacy is under question. Four Republican state legislators and two conservative interest groups filed a lawsuit last Monday against Ritchie, claiming the program was created illegally without legislative input. The registration program, which debuted Sept. 26, allows voters to register or update their information through an online form instead of a paper application. During the site’s initial debut, which lasted about three weeks,  the system registered 323 new voters statewide for the 2013 elections, and about 900 Minnesotans used the site to update their information. The plaintiffs are requesting the program end completely and its users re-register before casting a ballot. Until the case is heard, nothing will change for voters who have used the site, according to a report by the Star Tribune. Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, that supports Ritchie’s program, said in a Nov. 1 statement the system “makes the process of registering to vote easier and more streamlined. Republicans are simply being obstructionist in opposing online voter registration … I commend Mark Ritchie for a job well done to move Minnesota’s voting systems into the future,” he said in the statement.

Montana: Missoula’s all-mail elections raise turnout, create confusion | The Missoulian

Sean McQuillan doesn’t send letters by mail, and he definitely doesn’t carry around postage stamps. So to vote in last week’s all-mail election, McQuillan, 21, dropped off his ballot at one of the election drop sites in Missoula. This year was the fourth time the city of Missoula held a mail-only election, and turnout hit 43 percent with the mayor’s race on the ballot. “It really does help drive up participation in elections,” said McQuillan, chairman of the Montana Public Interest Research Group. It does by large numbers, too, according to the Missoula County Elections Office. At the same time, though, casting a ballot in Missoula can be complicated, and the process can leave voters muddled.

Montana: Judge hears arguments in redistricting lawsuit | Billings Gazette

A commission’s last-minute reassignment of two state senators to new central Montana districts was a political move to allow another state senator from Conrad to run for re-election in 2014, and should be thrown out, a lawyer for citizens in one of the districts argued Friday. Matthew Monforton, a Bozeman attorney, said the state Districting and Apportionment Commission members made the decision in closed-door meetings this February, without giving citizens in the affected districts any advance notice to comment. “This is a case where governmental power was used not for the benefit of the public, but rather to serve the interest of one man: (state Sen.) Llew Jones,” Monforton told a district judge in Helena. “Montana Senate seats are not the personal property of Llew Jones or any other citizen.” But an attorney for the state said the five-member panel violated no laws when it decided Feb. 12 to change districts assigned to a pair of senators, thus freeing up a district where Jones, a Conrad Republican, could run for re-election in 2014.

Editorials: An unfair and politically motivated jab at third-party rights in Ohio | Cleveland Plain Dealer

General Assembly Republicans on Wednesday demonstrated once again they can act quickly — when their self-interests are threatened. They passed, and Republican Gov. John Kasich immediately signed, a bill making it harder for candidates from the Libertarian, Green and other third parties to get on Ohio’s ballot. Of course, Republicans said Amended Substitute Senate Bill 193 simply filled a gap in Ohio law. But if that were so, Ohio Libertarians, who have sued to block the new law, would hardly be as vexed as they are. What’s actually at issue isn’t up-to-date law books but splits among Republicans that could threaten Kasich’s 2014 re-election. Much of the anti-Kasich huffing and puffing on the GOP’s right is just that: hot air. Still, a strong statewide showing by a third party or an independent could be significant — and some in the GOP fear that a Libertarian on the November ballot would take votes from Kasich.

Virginia: Provisional-ballot voters in Virginia face new obstacle | WTOP

A last-minute change means Fairfax County voters who cast provisional ballots may face troubles getting them counted. Nearly 500 voters cast provisional ballots in the county, many more across Virginia, in Tuesday’s election. But the promise from Democratic and Republican parties to make sure their ballots got counted is now no good. The state Electoral Board decided Friday to change the rules that had been followed in Fairfax County and ban legal representatives from stepping in to help get the ballot counted, unless the voter him or herself is there. County Electoral Board Secretary Brian Shoeneman says he and board chairman Seth Stark disagree with the ruling, but they have to comply. The board is voting on some provisional ballots later Saturday. “The office of the Attorney General advised us that this was the correct reading of the statute,” State Board of Elections Secretary Don Palmer says.

Virginia: Attorney General race becomes even closer | The Washington Post

As the dust settled on election night, a few things seemed clear about the race for Virginia attorney general: It was too close to call, the numbers would change during a statewide canvass and the loser would probably ask for a recount. What was then a standard-issue tight contest between state Sens. Mark D. Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) and Mark R. Herring (D-Loudoun) has turned into something more dramatic and uncertain. A frenetic weekend search for the right numbers — much of it taking place at the Fairfax County Government Center — produced thousands of uncounted votes and an even closer race. As of Sunday night, Obenshain led by 17 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast, according to the State Board of Elections Web site. At times Friday, Obenshain led by more than 1,200 votes, but the totals have changed regularly since Tuesday. Some of the shift was due to a handful of mistakes attributed to human or machine error. Some of it was the result of the standard canvassing process that takes place after every election. Both types of adjustment are typical, and no one suspects wrongdoing. But in a typical year, these additions and subtractions don’t affect the outcome.

Virginia: Every vote counts | NBC

You have heard the statement “every vote counts” your entire life. For the second time in eight years, voters in Virginia are learning that lesson first hand.  The race for Attorney General is still unsettled. It will remain that way for at least another month or so. A recount is certain, but the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman argues that it may not be the recount you should be focused on.  Wasserman argues that whomever is in the lead when the vote is certified at the end of November will likely be the winner. Even if the likely recount occurs. Wasserman stopped by the NBC12 studios Friday afternoon, the morning after he broke the news of the discovery of a serious error in the absentee vote collection in ballot rich Fairfax County. The potential for a problem was first raised by Ben Tribbett during our NBC12 Election Special Tuesday night.  Wasserman was informed of the discrepancy by Rep. Gerry Connolly’s political team, who understands Fairfax County’s electorate better than anyone. “They were suspicious from the beginning that Fairfax County’s absentee ballot count, particularly in Eastern Fairfax County, was too low given historical trends,” Wasserman said.

Virginia: Nearly 2,000 votes in Fairfax possibly uncounted | The Washington Post

Fairfax County election officials said Friday that they think that nearly 2,000 votes went uncounted after Tuesday’s election, a technical error that could affect the outcome of the still unresolved race for Virginia attorney general. The error stemmed from problems with a broken machine at the county’s Mason district voting center, officials said. The machine, known as an optical scanner, recorded 723 votes on election night before it broke down, elections officials said. Its memory card was then placed inside another, working machine, which recorded a total of 2,688 votes. But that tally was not included in the statement of election results delivered by the individual voting center to the county board of elections. Instead, officials received the statement that reported the 723 votes from the broken machine. The county’s board of elections believes that the larger total includes the original 723 votes, which could mean adding an extra 1,951 to the total outcome, said Seth T. Stark, chairman of the three-member electoral board.

Virginia: Could Voter ID Law Could Swing an Election? | AARP

You’ve probably read about the problems that many voters — especially older voters — have encountered under voter ID laws, many of which are relatively new. (There was the recent case, for example, of former House Speaker Jim Wright being turned away because, at 90, he didn’t have a valid driver’s license.) Among those who may have to make long trips to government offices to obtain voter ID cards are people without driver’s licenses (which, like Wright, many older Americans may no longer have), student or employee ID cards (which older Americans likely may not have had for years), or — in the curious case of Virginia — a handgun permit (I guess maybe some older Americans have those). Think about it: Every citizen (with the exception of convicted felons) has the right to vote. When voter ID requirements make it difficult to exercise that right, chaos may follow.

Voting Blogs: Down to the Provisionals: 55 Vote Margin (or Less) Out of 2.2 Million Cast in Virginia AG Race | BradBlog

As of late Saturday, just 55 votes separated the Democratic candidate from the Republican in the Virginia Attorney General’s race, according to the State Board of Elections (SBE) website. 55 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast after four days of canvassing, double-checking and processing a number of provisional ballots cast across the state during last Tuesday’s election. The state’s 55 vote spread, however, is still larger than the margin cited by the election geeks who have been following this race on a county-by-county and often precinct-by-precinct (even ballot-by-ballot) level. And they have been consistently and correctly ahead of the SBE-posted numbers. One of them, Virginia political expert and self-identified “vicious campaign insultant,” Ben Tribbett declared just a 15 vote margin earlier Saturday, after the spread had been just several hundred over the last few days. Late tonight, after a few more provisionals were tallied in the City of Richmond, Tribbett adjusted his tally to a 44 vote margin. Another one of those geeks, Dave Wasserman of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, predicted Friday night on Twitter that, after all provisional ballots are added in, “this thing could be single digits.” It looks like he wasn’t kidding.