Here's How The Virginia (AG) Recount Will Work

[Tx4obama]

Here's How The Virginia Recount Will Work

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Virginia State Sen. Mark Obenshain's (R) campaign formally filed for a recount Wednesday. The move, long expected, came just two days after the Virginia State Board of Elections certified Obenshain's opponent, state Sen. Mark Herring (D), as the winner of the race by a tiny 165-vote margin. Because Herring's margin of victory is within 1 percent of the more than 2 million votes tallied in the race, either Obenshain or Herring could have requested a recount.

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A three-judge panel is formed for overseeing the election process. The panel, made up of the chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court, Bradley B. Cavedo, and two other judges appointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia will oversee the recount. Most of the rules for the recount are already established but the panel will handle setting some of the procedures for the recount as well as any complaints either the Obenshain campaign or Herring campaign has about how the recount is going. The panel will hold hearings roughly a week after the Obenshain campaign's recount petition has been filed to establish the specific dates and procedures for the recount.

The Obenshain campaign said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning that it expected the recount to happen sometime in mid-December and that it would likely take a day, possibly two, for all the ballots to be recounted.

This recount will be different from previous Virginia recounts in that all ballots counted through optical scan will be rescanned again. That's in contrast to the 2005 attorney general recount between Bob McDonnell (R) and Creigh Deeds (D). State law during that recount said that the three-judge panel had to re-tabulate scanned ballots by hand. In 2008, Deeds sponsored legislation changing the law so all scanned ballots went through optical scan machines again instead of a hand recount. All other types of ballots cast in the race, including provisional and absentee, will be hand counted again.

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Full article here: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/here-s-how-a-recount-in-the-virginia-attorney-general-race-will-work

[mgcgulfcoast]

1. we need to be vigilant.

[Stevepol]

2. Hunh-Oh!

Creigh Deeds has "sponsored legislation changing the law so all scanned ballots went through optical scan machines again instead of a hand recount."

Who can trust his or her own eyes in a hand-count after all? Let's add a layer of doubt by letting the machines count (however they happen to be programmed for this recount of course) rather than real humans.

[ancianita]

3. Depends on who's doing the re-scans, doesn't it. Otherwise, one can re-scan a hundred times.

[blkmusclmachine]

4. 100 to 1 the GOP "finds" "missing" ballots...

[polichick]

6. Yeah, like they did in Wisconsin. That's their go-to solution.

[Coyotl]

5. They don't have a prayer and they are wasting taxpayer funds for nothing.

Most of Virginia recounts EXACTLY the same because there are no paper ballots to recount. They just check the machine totals again.

So, this race is settled and only waiting a little longer to be made official.