Virginia's vote-counters are ready for a tight race that could take days to resolve
Recent polls have the high-stakes Virginia governor’s race as a neck-and-neck contest between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin — and that means it could take days to determine the winner.
The vast majority of Virginia’s votes are expected to be counted on Election Day, and the state has made improvements to election laws earlier this year that will likely expedite the election night process — including some changes made, at least partially, to prevent conspiracy theories about the count from taking hold. But exceedingly close elections can take longer to resolve, including recounts. And in this case, Virginia law allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive by Nov. 5, three days later.
Former President Donald Trump and some of his supporters have already begun warning of voter fraud and laying the groundwork to question the veracity of Virginia’s elections after undermining faith in the 2020 results with a series of baseless claims. “The Virginia governor's election — you better watch it,” Trump said in an interview with John Fredericks, a popular conservative radio host in the state, in September. “You have a close race in Virginia, but it’s not close if they cheat.”
Other states soon took center stage after Election Day 2020, but Virginia’s vote-counting was another prime example of how bad actors can sow disinformation by taking advantage of the general public’s unfamiliarity with election procedures. The Associated Press called the state for President Joe Biden about a half-hour after polls closed. At the time only 10 percent of the vote was reported in, and Trump was still leading in the early raw vote count. That lead in the incomplete count persisted for hours, which conspiracy theorists used to claim the state was stolen from Trump.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/virginias-vote-counters-are-ready-for-a-tight-race-that-could-take-days-to-resolve/ar-AAQ2DPH
Seems to be the Republican playbook these days. If you don't win cry that you were cheated.
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