I'm a little perplexed as to why the DKos map and the Virginia State Board of Elections website both showed Perriello ahead last night with one precinct left to report, but now the DKos map shows 100% of precincts reporting, with Perriello ahead by 1157 votes, (157,851 for Perriello to 156,694 for Goode), and the SBE site shows Goode ahead by 302 votes (Goode: 157,070; Perriello: 156,768). WTF??!!
I stayed up until 1:00 a.m. last night monitoring the results of this race on both sites, and went to bed somewhat comfortable in the knowledge that Perriello appeared to have a sufficient--although razor-thin--margin for victory with insufficient votes in the outstanding precinct to cover the margin even if Goode took 100% of the votes there.
So what the hell happened here? And why does the DKos map show 100% of the precincts counted with Perriello ahead while the SBE appears to have done a recount in mid-count and changed their results?
I wish I'd taken sequential screenshots of the incoming results from both sites as I was monitoring them last night, but was too exhausted from volunteering at the polls to even see straight, much less do anything resembling work. So I don't remember, or have any documentation, of what the counts were in the late hours of the night as the final precincts reported. I just know Perriello appeared to be sufficiently in the lead to stave off the remaining precinct.
I hope someone out there has been paying close attention to this race and can explain these bizarre results to me. Is this provisional ballot counting, that's being added to the previous numbers, or what?
I'm still crossing my fingers that DKos is right and Perriello won, but how can the SBE site be wrong?
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Update #1:
This Roanoke, VA news site seems to show the SBE TAKING VOTES AWAY from Perriello. Again, WTF??!!
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Update #2:
Thanks to iamjackshandle for the link to the SBE change history which shows the races appears to have pivoted on the Danville electronic VERIS machine malfunction. Does anyone have any history on this kind of VERIS issue? This all sounds very screwy to me.
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Update #3:
I changed the title to reflect the shadiness of the situation in this race. Please rec this diary up to bring attention to this situation! We can't let Goode steal this race from Perriello!
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Update #4:
The Virginia SBE site now shows 100% of the precincts reporting and Goode winning by 448 votes! The Danville electronic vote switch made the difference! Listen up, Kossacks, we've got to publicize this issue and demand an investigation of the Danville votes! Again, please rec up this diary to make our fellow Kossacks aware of this scandal. We cannot let this stand!
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Update #5:
More craziness, this time in Perriello's favor:
VA SBE change history
Goode is now up by only 146 votes, which means the Lunenburg County changes swung about 300 votes Perriello's way.
Maybe this isn't over, after all!
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Update #6:
faithfull at Raising Kaine also has a good diary on this
here
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Update #7:
SBOE added a provisional vote to Perriello's tally, bringing the difference to 145.
Faithfull over at Raising Kaine says the SBOE is counting provisional ballots today and canvassing all returns.
We may not have a definitive answer until November 24th, which is when VA states the returns must be certified.
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Update #8:
Changing seemingly by the minute, SBOE updated counts in Appomattox and Lunenburg Counties, bringing the difference to 110.
CNN is now showing Perriello ahead by 522, with a higher total vote tally than SBOE. I'll have a breakdown of the county-by-county differences between the two counts later. But it initially looks like CNN is on top of the SBOE changes, plus their own additional numbers possibly coming from provisional ballot counts not posted on the SBOE site.
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Update #9:
Okay, just keep clicking on the SBOE and CNN links above to see the new data. It's already changed again since I posted the last update, and it looks like this see-saw is going to continue throughout the day.