Virginia: Attorney general race thrusts provisional ballot into spotlight | Fredricksburg.com

The minuscule margin of votes between Virginia’s two attorney general candidates has brought renewed attention to a relatively new aspect of voting in Virginia: the provisional ballot. There were about 3,170 provisional votes cast in the attorney general’s race on Election Day, out of 2.2 million total votes. The difference between the two candidates is currently 164 votes. Before 2012, voters that poll workers could not find on poll books could vote if they signed an affidavit that they were who they said they were and were registered to vote. But lawmakers felt that wasn’t secure enough. The provisional ballot, created by state law in 2012, is how people vote if they show up at the polls and have no identification, or if there is some doubt about whether they are registered to vote or registered at the precinct where they have come to vote.

Virginia: The victor in Virginia’s attorney general race stands a chance of losing | MSNBC

Even if Democrat Mark Herring ends up with more votes than his Republican rival Mark Obenshain in the tightly contested Virginia attorney general’s race, he could still lose. Herring is currently ahead of Obenshain by a follicle–the current official count states that Herring has 164 more votes than Obenshain out of more than two million cast. A recount is all but guaranteed and litigation seems likely. But even if after the dust clears Herring remains in the lead, under Virginia law, Obenshain could contest the result in the Republican dominated Virginia legislature, which could declare Obenshain the winner or declare the office vacant and order a new election. “If they can find a hook to demonstrate some sort of irregularity, then there’s nothing to prevent them from saying our guy wins,” says Joshua Douglas, an election law expert and professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law.  “There’s no rules here, besides outside political forces and public scrutiny.” An election contest is a specific post-election procedure for disputing the official outcome of an election. Different states have different rules for election contests–some put them in the hands of the courts, others in the hands of the legislature. Obenshain couldn’t simply contest the election out of the blue. He’d have to argue that some sort of irregularity affected the result. Still, Virginia law is relatively vague in explaining what would justify an election contest, and historical precedent suggests that co-partisans in the legislature are unlikely to reach a decision that hurts their candidate.

Editorials: Virginia Attorney General Election: When voters don’t decide | Reuters

Voters decide who wins an election, right? Not necessarily. In fact, we may see partisan operatives determine the winner in the razor-thin race for Virginia’s attorney general. After the initial count, Democrat Mark Herring is ahead of Republican Mark Obenshain by a mere 164 votes out of 2.2 million. If Herring remains on top after a recount and any federal court litigation, then the next step is for the Republican candidate to initiate an “election contest” with the Virginia General Assembly. This election contest is a procedure in which the losing candidate disputes the certified results. States have varying ways to resolve these controversies — and most use a process that allows partisans to determine the ultimate winner. There are better solutions, however, than allowing a partisan legislature to decide. We can minimize ideology, actual or perceived, by creating a bipartisan entity that would resolve a post-election battle. Yet in Virginia an election contest goes to the General Assembly sitting as a joint session, with the speaker of the House of Delegates presiding. Republicans now control a majority of the Virginia General Assembly seats — and have been pushing through a socially conservative agenda.

Virginia: Twitter postings alert Virginia vote-counters to errors in race | Bloomberg

A day after he took to Twitter last week to question the vote-count in the Virginia attorney general race, an email from a top state official popped into David Wasserman’s inbox. Wasserman, a political analyst with encyclopedic knowledge of Virginia’s voting patterns, figured he was in for a tirade. In the aftermath of the Nov. 5 election, he had been combing through the state’s ballot count and posting Twitter messages about problems and discrepancies. “I was expecting them to say, ‘Stop denigrating our electoral process.’ Instead they said, ‘I want to thank you for the public service you’re doing’,” Wasserman, the House Editor at the Washington-based nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said in an interview. Virginia’s cliffhanger of an attorney general’s race is the first in which Twitter, the micro-blogging social media platform, has played a prominent part in the vote certification, and it may offer a model for how close elections play out in the age of social networking.

Virginia: With 164 Vote Attorney General Victory, Virginia Democrats Sweep State | Time

The difference between a vote cast and a vote counted was nowhere clearer than in the Virginia race for attorney general. A week after Election Day, Democrat state Senator Mark Herring proved victorious over Republican state Senator Mark Obenshain by a margin of 164 votes out of over 2.2 million cast, according to the Virginia State Board of Elections unofficial online tally. Localities had until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday to report numbers to the state. … Episodes occurred in Fairfax and Richmond counties, two of the most populous in the state. Among other election observers, Michael McDonald, an Associate Professor of government and politics at George Mason University, found that absentee turnout from Fairfax didn’t match his prediction. While Brian W. Schoeneman, a Republican member of the Fairfax Electoral Board, protested through Twitter that all had been counted, upon further review, state election officials found that a tabulation machine had broken and the votes on a replacement machine weren’t counted. Around 3,000 votes were then reviewed, and a large majority went to Herring, who at that point was losing in the unofficial tally. … In Richmond, state officials failed to enter more than 200 votes, throwing the aforementioned 17-vote lead for Obenshain to the razor-slim 117-vote margin for Herring. In this case, officials realized their mistake well before it hit social media.

Virginia: Herring, Obenshain dig in for a fight in tight attorney general race as the lawyers move in | The Washington Post

A week after Election Day, there may be as many lawyers involved in the race for Virginia attorney general as there are votes separating the two candidates. As of Wednesday, state Sen. Mark R. Herring (D-Loudoun) led state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) by 164 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast, according to the State Board of Elections, a margin that would make it the closest statewide contest in modern Virginia history. The two candidates are digging in for a battle, and if the post-hanging-chads era has taught us anything, it’s that a race this tight can’t be over yet. The lawyers will make sure of that. Obenshain’s strategy is to concede nothing. Statewide vote totals won’t be certified until Nov. 25, and then the trailing candidate will probably ask for a recount. So on Wednesday, both Obenshain and Herring announced transition teams, and Obenshain said it was premature to discuss legal action or a recount. “I don’t know who is going to move into the attorney general’s office in January, and despite what Mark Herring says, he doesn’t know either,” Obenshain said at a Richmond news conference. “It is important for us to allow the State Board of Elections and our statutory process to work, to make sure every legitimate vote is fairly counted. And I’m committed to seeing that process through.”

Virginia: Mark Herring gets a leg up in attorney general’s race in late ballot count | The Washington Post

State Sen. Mark R. Herring padded his still-narrow lead over state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain on Tuesday night in the race for Virginia attorney general, giving the Democrat an apparent 163-vote advantage before the results of the contest are certified. The Fairfax County Electoral Board finished reviewing provisional ballots – mostly cast by people who did not have ID or went to the wrong polling place – and added 160 votes to Herring’s (Loudoun) total and 103 votes to the Republican’s. Herring already led on the State Board of Elections Web site by 106 votes. The additional 57-vote margin from Fairfax was expected to give Herring a statewide lead of 163 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast – barring any last-minute changes from other localities, which had until 11:59 pm Tuesday to submit their numbers to the state election board. A recount appears all but certain after the statewide results are certified Nov. 25, and the Obenshain campaign made clear that it considers the race far from over. “We owe it to the people of Virginia to make sure we get it right, and that every legitimate vote is counted and subject to uniform rules,” Obenshain (Harrisonburg) said in a statement.

Voting Blogs: Mark Herring ‘Wins’ Virginia Attorney General Race by 163 Votes Before Final State Certification, Almost Certain ‘Recount’ | Brad Blog

The last of the votes to be tallied in Virginia, prior to the certification deadline at 11:59pm ET tonight is done. With the Fairfax County provisional ballots optically-scanned and added to the totals, it appears that the Democratic candidate Mark Herring will be declared the “winner” for now, by just 163 votes — out of more than 2.2 million cast — over Republican Mark Obenshain. If Herring can maintain his extraordinarily slim lead throughout the almost-certain “recount”, he will become Virginia’s first Democratic Attorney General in twenty years, and his party will have swept all three top-ticket races in the state this year — Governor, Lt. Governor and AG. The final provisional tallies in Democratic-leaning Fairfax County resulted in 160 votes for Herring and 103 for Obenshain, a net 57 vote pickup. Barring any surprises in the next hour (there have been plenty of twists and turns in this nail-biter over the past week since the election – see related coverage below), the final tally before the full state certification process begins as of Midnight Tuesday night will be Herring: 1,103,778 – Obenshain: 1,103,615.

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).

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.

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: 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.

Virginia: Provisional Ballot Battles Loom Ahead Of Virginia Recount | TRNS

Amid wild rumors, frantic fundraising and legal maneuvering, Virginia’s attorney general election hangs in the balance. Shades of Florida 2000? As of Thursday afternoon, Republican Mark Obenshain held a 681 vote lead over Democrat Mark Herring, out of 2.2 million ballots cast. But more ballots are still out there. Thousands of provisional votes — 492 in Fairfax County alone — have yet to be counted. Both parties are gearing up for a county-by-county fight to include or exclude those ballots, which were cast by people who didn’t present legally permissible identification at the polls. All these battles come before the inevitable statewide recount. Virginia election results are due to be finalized Nov. 25.

Voting Blogs: Thousands of Votes Discovered ‘Unaccounted For’ in Virginia AG Race | BradBlog

With more than 2.2 million votes cast, the margin between Mark Obenshain (R) and Mark Herring (D) has been within a few hundred votes since Election Night on Tuesday. Within the last few hours, an unexplained discrepancy has been discovered by those combing over the reported numbers in Fairfax County. The county leans heavily Democratic and, unlike much of the rest of the state which uses 100% unverifiable touch-screen, Fairfax uses optically-scanned paper ballots for its main vote tabulation system. After Democrats reportedly won both the Governor and Lt. Governor races, only the AG’s remains undecided at the top of the ticket. For the last 24 hours or so, the Republican Obenshain has been leading during the canvassing of ballots by about 700 votes, as absentee and provisionals are tallied and doubled-checked. But now, thanks to some smart detective work by both a Democratic political team in Fairfax County and by Dave Wasserman of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, the fortunes for the Democrat candidate Herring may just have taken a big turn, even as a new mystery is added to the equation.

Virginia: In tight race for Attorney General, Virginia has specific recount process | The Washington Post

With Republican state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain holding the slimmest lead — less than 500 votes — over Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring to become attorney general, the race is likely headed for a recount. That means, it would be weeks before Virginians are certain who will be the state’s top lawyer. First, there is no such thing as an automatic recount. Under Virginia law, a loser in a tight race may request a recount within 10 days after the state Board of Elections certifies the results. That won’t happen until Nov. 25 — after each county and city canvasses and certifies its own results.

Virginia: Dead heat in Virginia attorney general’s race; recount expected | The Washington Post

The Virginia attorney general’s race was a virtual dead heat and headed for a recount early Wednesday morning, with Republican State Sen. Mark D. Obenshain clinging to a 778-vote lead over Democratic State Sen. Mark Herring with 2.1 million ballots cast, according to an unofficial Associated Press count. State election law provides for the trailing candidate to request a recount if the margin is less that 1 percent of the total vote. Speaking to reporters just before midnight, Herring (D-Leesburg) said he would request a recount. “The race for attorney general is razor-close, and the commonwealth has a process to make sure all the votes are counted, and we are going to make sure we go through that process. Right now, it’s basically 50-50 and the numbers have been moving in our direction all night. The race is far from over. And we are going to make sure we follow the process and make sure every single vote is counted.”