Good vows to challenge results. Here’s a reality check on the 5th District primary.

We are now headed into the unknown.

U.S. Rep. Bob Good has vowed to file a legal challenge to block certification of the 5^th District Republican primary results, which have him losing to state Sen. John McGuire by 376 votes (the margin inched up a few votes after Lynchburg and Nottoway County updated their results Tuesday). He also wants a recount, which he’s legally entitled to — although the results are far enough apart that he’d have to pay for it, and nobody I’ve talked to can remember a campaign ever paying for a recount. (Update: Will Pace, chair of the Pittsylvania County Republican Party, tells me that in 2017 Manoli Loupassi paid for a recount in his House of Delegates race in Chesterfield County, so we have at least one example.)

Let’s try to make sense of what’s going on, and what could go on.

1. The Associated Press still says the race is “too close to call,” so why is Cardinal saying McGuire won?

First, keep in mind that a news organization “calling” an election has no force of law whatsoever. You and your cousin Cletus can “call” an election if you want. Every news organization has its own standards for “calling” races, and the Associated Press tends to be very cautious about such things. Ultimately, the authority here is the State Board of Elections, and the official canvass completed Monday shows McGuire up by 376 votes. These are the results that are set to be certified at the State Electoral Board’s meeting on July 2. Based on my five-decades-plus following Virginia politics, I don’t think it’s too close to call because there are no more votes outstanding. The mail ballots are in, the provisional ballots have been adjudicated, the votes have been counted. The only thing that will change something now is a recount.

2. So does Good have a chance to block the election results or overturn them?

I’m not a lawyer — only a political analyst. But I can say I’ve never known of anyone in Virginia to file suit to block the State Board of Elections from certifying an election. As a political analyst, I’m highly skeptical. The irregularities that Good has talked about most are:

• Fire alarms at three precincts on Election Day. “What is the probability? Does anyone recall even 1 fire at a precinct on election day?” his campaign posted on Twitter/X, with this follow-up: “AI estimates the probability being 0.0000000318% chance.” WSET-TV in Lynchburg looked into this and found the Albemarle County alarm was triggered by a ceiling tile hitting a fire arm, the Hanover County alarm was triggered by steam from a water heater and the Lynchburg alarm was triggered by cleaning equipment.
  
• Ballot tabulation in Albemarle County began without a Good campaign representative present. If true, this is not good, but as a practical matter, Albemarle is a county that Good won — and his current percentage (54.57%) is virtually the same as it was in the unofficial election night count. It’s not as if we saw a big, suspicious vote shift toward McGuire.
  
• A dropbox in Lynchburg that was left unsecured and in which ballots were found — and counted — days after it should have been checked. “Lynchburg is the big key,” Good told the Associated Press. “That can’t be certified. There’s no confidence in Lynchburg’s results.” The Lynchburg situation is bad (more on that later) but, as a practical matter, only involves seven ballots. Seven ballots are not going to make the difference here.
  

From what I see politically, Good seems to be engaging in misdirection. His campaign refers to “Democrat-controlled Albemarle.” It’s true that Albemarle County votes Democratic — in general elections. However, by law, all electoral boards are now under Republican control. (The governor’s party always has two of the three seats, so since we have a Republican governor, we have Republican-controlled electoral boards.)

3. How bad is the Lynchburg situation?

As a matter of principle, very bad. As a practical matter, insignificant. The registrar’s office says the dropbox was unsealed and ballots were removed at 12:50 p.m. on primary day, then resealed. It should have been checked again at the voting deadline, but was not. It sounds as if someone simply forgot. Not until Friday at 12:15 p.m. did anyone check the dropbox again, at which time seven ballots were found. The error was then compounded when those votes were mixed in with others and not kept segregated.

Innocent human error creeps into any enterprise, but for an electoral board run by a party that has run on the issue of election integrity, this is all quite concerning.

However … the Lynchburg Electoral Board did verify that all seven ballots came from eligible voters who had signed up to vote absentee, and it’s likely — not certain, but likely — that the ballots came in before the deadline. In any case, this does involve just seven ballots. Lynchburg (and all of us) got lucky. If this had involved hundreds of ballots of unknown provenance, both the 5^th District congressional primary and the city’s Republican primary for the Ward IV council seat would have been in question. As it is, seven ballots aren’t enough to change the outcome of any of those races. This simply becomes a learning experience.

4. Good wants a hand-count in any recount. Will he get one?

I refer you to the story we published Tuesday that recaps some frequently asked questions about recounts. Virginia law is quite explicit: Optical scan ballots (which is what we’re talking about here) must be run through the machine again. There is no provision in the law for a hand-count of those ballots. Good also wants a “do-over” in Lynchburg. There’s no provision in state law for that, either. The law specifically says run the ballots through the machine again and that’s it; that result is final and can’t be appealed. I can’t tell whether Good is just trying to distract people or honestly doesn’t know the law; but if I, a mere scribbler out in the woods, can look up the law, so can he. For what it’s worth, he took 58% of the vote in Lynchburg. It was one of his best localities.

Whether a hand-count is superior to, or inferior to, running the ballots through the machines again may be a matter of political taste, but Virginia law doesn’t seem open to interpretation. Furthermore, for what it’s worth, multiple studies have found that hand-counts are more prone to introduce errors. Here’s one from the Brennan Center for Justice, another from the States United Democracy Center, yet a third from Verified Voting.

5. Can Good afford to pay for a recount?

Now we move from the realm of fact to speculation, although some facts still apply. McGuire’s margin is 0.6%. If the margin were 0.5% or less, the local electoral boards would pay for the recount. If it’s between 0.5% and 1%, Good is legally entitled to a recount, but his campaign has to pay for it. Nobody I’ve spoken to can ever remember a campaign in Virginia paying for a recount for two simple reasons: Recounts rarely change the results, and they’re expensive. (Update again: That Loupassi recount cost his campaign about $20,000; it also saw Dawn Adams’ margin of victory expand from 336 to 347 votes.)

How expensive would a recount in the 5^th District be? We don’t know yet, but we do have some numbers to go by. Petersburg paid $3,600 last year to recount 7,601 votes in a House of Delegates race. Dinwiddie County paid about $4,000 to recount 9,249 votes in the same race. Henrico County budgeted $100,000 to recount 106,522 ballots in a clerk’s race.

There are lots of price drivers here — the number of precincts involved, and the number of votes involved, all of which factor into how many hours this will take. If we just measured recount price per precinct, the rate in those three recounts ranged from $333 to $1,098 per precinct. If we just measured price per ballot, we’re talking $1.66 to $2.11 per ballot. Let’s apply that to the 5^th District. There are 303 precincts, so on that measure alone, we’re talking a recount price of $100,899 to $329,967. There are 62,792 votes, so on that measure alone, we’re talking a recount price of $104,234 to $132,491.

As with anything, actual results may vary; but that’s a rough computation of what a recount might cost — probably somewhere in the low six figures. Through May 30, Good’s campaign raised $908,022, so you can do your own math to see how a recount compares to the price of the actual campaign.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been to a recount — two, in fact. In 2015, Roanoke County held recounts in two elections: a Cave Spring supervisors’ race where the Republican appeared to win by three votes and a countywide clerk’s race where the Democrat appeared to win by 37 votes. I found it a fascinating, but tedious, process. We sat in the courtroom all day long and watched election workers feed the ballots into the machines again. I remember a constant whirring; imagine a whole bank of copying machines at work. The three judges who presided over the recount had no real work to do; they only needed to rule in case any ballots were disputed, and none were. The chief judge, Circuit Court James Swanson, went to the courtroom next door and presided over his regular docket, occasionally checking in on the progress of the recount. The two other judges, both retired judges from other jurisdictions, went into a back room. I’m told one did legal work on another case he was handling; the other was said to have spent the day reading a book.

About 10 p.m., the machines fell silent, counting came to an end and the three judges came back into the courtroom for the final numbers: The Republican in the supervisor’s race picked up one additional vote (out of 4,747 cast); the Democrat in the clerk’s race picked up two additional votes (out of 22,970 cast). The election night winner was affirmed in both races. That’s not what I remember most, though. What I remember is that after it was all over, the observers from both parties hugged each other.

Is it too much to hope for that again?