The Virginia AG’s race now sees Republican Mark Obenshain ahead of Democrat Mark Herring by 777 votes. But that doesn’t include provisional ballots, of which there are apparently 2,500 or so that were issued on election day. Nor does it include crazy stuff like what Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report (note: Dave’s been doing superb work on this AG recount; I strongly recommend that everyone follow his Twitter feed) just tweeted about (see the string of tweets below). That’s right, there may be 3,000 absentee ballots missing in Fairfax County – a jurisdiction Herring won 61%-39%. Allocate those 3,000 votes proportionally, and that would give Mark Herring another 660 votes – nearly enough to make up his 777-vote deficit, even BEFORE the provisionals (which one would think would tilt heavily Democratic) are counted. Fascinating.
P.S. Wasserman just added, “IF #VA08 Fairfax precincts had the same AB return rate as other precincts, there would be ~7,421 absentees, not 4,168. Huge difference.” Also, “In full disclosure/credit, I was first alerted to a problem with #VA08 Fairfax absentees by #VA11 Rep. @GerryConnolly’s political operation.”
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