[EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/11/11

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

Hoping other listers will correct me if I'm off...

The Houck campaign in Virginia probably made the decision not to request a
recount because of the interplay between Virginia election law and the
extensive use of direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems in
Virginia. Most Virginia jurisdictions use DREs and Virginia law only allows
the totals tapes to be "re-read" by election administrators, which means
the results for DRE votes are unlikely to change much.

That is, Virginia Code S. 24.2-802 (D)(2) (
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+24.2-802 ) says:

"For direct recording electronic machines (DREs), the recount officials
shall open the envelopes with the printouts and read the results from the
printouts. If the printout is not clear, or on the request of the court,
the recount officials shall rerun the printout from the machine or examine
the counters as appropriate."

So, if the campaign thinks they can't make up the difference through
absentee/optical scan ballots (where humans interpret voter-made marks),
then it might not make much sense to request a recount.  Virginia is not a
"no-excuse" absentee voting state, so many would be using DREs in the
counties for that district*.

* Counties for the Houck district are: Culpeper County (All);
Fredericksburg City (Part); Louisa County (All); Madison County (All);
Orange County (All); Spotsylvania County (Part).  You can use the VVF
Verifier to look at the variety of DREs used in those areas (only
Fredericksburg City uses optical scanners as its standard polling place
equipment:
https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?state=Virginia&county=Fredericksburg%20%28city%29&ec=allall&year=2008).

best, Joe

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote
>
>
>
>  No Overtime in Va, as Democrat Concedes<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=25295>
> Posted on November 11, 2011 9:13 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=25295>
> by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> *WaPo*<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/democrat-edd-houck-concedes-virginia-senate-race-republicans-lock-up-hold-on-power/2011/11/10/gIQAzCOv9M_story.html>:
> “Because the vote was so close, Houck could have requested a recount.
> Friends and supporters had encouraged him to do so, but Houck said he did
> not think he could overcome Reeves’s lead once it grew beyond 200.”
>
> There must be more to the story here, because 200 is a pretty small margin.
>

-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Media, Culture and Communication
New York University
https://josephhall.org/
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