Another District 11 Update

from Anthony Bedell

1. No winner has been declared in the 11th Congressional District Election, which remains one of the closest elections in the country. Three days after the closing of the polls, the difference in votes for Keith Fimian and Gerald Connolly is less than 1,000 votes out of over 220,000 cast in the election -- well within the margin for a recount in Virginia.

2. Right now, each locality in the 11th Congressional District is winding up a post-election canvass, including counting provisional ballots. The canvass is a legal process in which local officials literally reconstruct the results of the election one voting machine and one precinct at a time, to ensure that all votes validly cast in the election are counted fairly and accurately. Once the local canvass is finished, including provisional ballots, the local officials will send the election returns to Richmond for further review by state election officials, who will certify the official results of the election later this month.

3. The canvass is a public process, and our observers have been monitoring it since the minute it began.

4. There are several developments in the Fimian - Connolly race that may call into question the accuracy of the current vote totals.

Here are the issues that are being looked at:

• In Fairfax County, the voting machines failed to register votes from over 800 ballots, including 106 in the Sideburn precinct alone. (Keith Fimian won that precinct 58% - 40%.) In Prince William County, the machines failed to register votes on more than 200 additional ballots.
• In several precincts, there were actually more votes than voters. That is, voting machines reported a higher number of votes than the number of voters marked on the pollbooks as having voted in the election.
• As of Election Day, there were over 1,150 absentee ballots that had been mailed out to military and other overseas voters but had yet to be received back in the 11th Congressional District.
• We also understand that officials in Prince William County rejected over 280 absentee ballots, with another 200-300 absentee ballots being rejected in Fairfax County.

So the process is unfolding as set forth in the law and these are some of the questions that are being considered at this time.