More than 1,000 ballots remain uncounted in Lynchburg, which could be enough to move the needle in a tight race for treasurer, city registrar Daniel Pense said Wednesday morning.
As of Wednesday morning, fewer than 500 votes separated Republican Brian Triplett, who’s in the lead, from independent Brian Witt in a race with more than 22,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections.
Incumbent Republicans won in three other constitutional office races and the race for House District 52, according to those state results.
Lynchburg will have a new treasurer for the first time in 10 years because Republican incumbent Robert Bailey is retiring, but who will fill his shoes is still too close to call, Pense said.
There are two groups of votes that have not yet been counted in Lynchburg, Pense said, and “that number of open votes could swing that race one way or another.”
The first group, consisting of about 1,100 provisional ballots, needs to be validated by Lynchburg’s electoral board before being counted. That process will take at least a week, and provisional votes will likely be tabulated and posted online by Nov. 13, Pense said.
Provisional ballots are used by people who do not appear on the list of registered voters at their polling location and hence are subject to approval to ensure they are eligible to vote, according to the state Department of Elections. The majority of provisional ballots in Lynchburg come from same-day voter registrations, Pense said. About 800 provisional ballots were collected in the precinct that’s home to Liberty University, Pense said, due to the high volume of same-day registrations in the student body.
The second group of uncounted votes consists of what’s considered post-election votes — those that are currently in the mail but have not yet arrived at the registrar’s mailbox. The collection of post-election votes ends at noon Friday, and results should be posted online by the end of that day, Pense said.
There’s no way to predict how many post-election votes there are, Pense said, but it will likely be less than 1,000 based on previous patterns that he’s observed in Lynchburg’s elections.
