Has he won? City could hand close race to Perriello

More than 650 surprise votes from Charlottesville gave Democratic congressional candidate Tom Perriello an unexpectedly wide lead Thursday in his race against six-term GOP incumbent U.S. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount.

As of 8:40 p.m. Thursday, Perriello had 158,562 votes, compared with Goode’s 157,914 — a 648-vote advantage for Perriello.

“We’re still waiting for a couple localities to report in,” Perriello campaign spokeswoman Jessica Barba said. “But we feel really confident about where things stand.”

Two days after Election Day, the race in the 5th District — which includes Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene and Nelson — remained too close to call. Neither side had declared victory and a recount was likely.

Democrats across Virg-inia saw Thursday’s lead as an indication that Perriello is on the brink of victory. Virginia’s Democratic Party chairman, C. Richard Cranwell, called Perriello around 5 p.m. to congratulate the 34-year-old from Ivy.

“I have just called what I consider to be Congress-man-elect Tom Perriello,” Cranwell said. “I told him it looks like he was the winner.”

Goode’s campaign said it is too early to talk about which candidate won or lost, as the district-wide vote tally has not wrapped up.

“Any declarations of winners and losers in this race is premature,” Goode said in a 7:15 p.m. statement. “This contest is undeniably close, the vote totals have greatly varied back and forth since election night, and the official counting process is still ongoing. It is important that we take the time for a fair and thorough process to ensure that every legitimate vote is counted. We remain optimistic that we will prevail when this process is completed.”

Early Thursday, Perriello was hanging on with only a 30-vote lead. The numbers continued to fluctuate slightly as election officials across the district verified their vote counts from Tuesday and finished counting valid provisional ballots.

It was not until Charlottesville completed up its two-day canvass and sent its updated numbers to the State Board of Elections at 2 p.m. that Perriello rocketed to a tangible lead.

The bulk of the surprise votes from Charlottesville were from two voting precincts, Jefferson Park and Carver, in which the full vote tally was not recorded on election night. Charlottesville residents had the choice of voting via a paper ballot or on an electronic voting machine. At Jefferson Park and Carver, the precinct captains accidentally did not telephone in the counts from their paper ballots.

As a result, the Jefferson Park precinct was undercounting its votes for Perriello by 411 and its votes for Goode by 100. Carver precinct undercounted its Perriello votes by 244 and its Goode votes by 23.

“There’s a reason on election nights that we call the numbers unofficial returns,” Charlottesville Electoral Board Chairman Rick Sincere said.

Charlottesville’s provisional ballots — those cast by voters with registration hiccups — also tilted heavily in favor of Perriello. Of the 84 provisional ballots cast, 18 were accepted. Fifteen of those were for Perriello, while three were for Goode.

Another 172 absentee ballots in Charlottesville were not counted on election night because they were not readable by the voting machine. The votes were counted during the city’s two-day vote canvass, Sincere said.

Goode also benefited from late arriving votes Thursday. Campbell County, for example, did not report some 1,091 votes for Goode until late Thursday afternoon. Goode’s newly counted votes, however, appeared to fall short of the votes coming in for Perriello.

As of 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 18 of the 22 counties and cities had filed their corrected vote counts with the State Board of Elections. Waiting to be updated were the city of Bedford and the counties of Albemarle, Cumberland and Mecklenburg.

The Perriello campaign said late Thursday that it had received verified numbers from Cumberland and Bedford and there were no changes. Results from Albemarle and Mecklenburg are expected today.

Officials with both parties said they were anticipating a recount. Both Perriello and Goode have said they want every vote counted before they consider a recount.

Under Virginia law, a candidate may request a recount at taxpayer expense if there is less than a 0.5 percent margin between the candidates’ vote returns. A recount may also be requested if the margin is between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, though the candidate must finance the recount. If it turns out the candidate won in that scenario, the taxpayers pick up the tab.

By Thursday evening, Perriello had 50.07 percent of the vote, while Goode had 49.87 percent.

The candidate with fewer votes must request a recount within 10 days after the election is certified on Nov. 24. The request is filed in the circuit court of the locality where the winning candidate lives. Goode would file for a recount in Albemarle County Circuit Court, while Perriello would file in Franklin County.

Vote recounts are essentially a do-over of the district-wide voting canvass that occurs after every election. Such recounts rarely shift the vote totals very far. In 2005, a recount in the statewide attorney general’s race between Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell only changed McDonnell’s margin of victory from 323 votes to 360 out of 1.94 million cast.

University of Virginia politics professor Larry J. Sabato said that Goode would be hard pressed to come back from so far behind in a recount.

If Goode is unseated, Sabato said, he may decide to take on Perriello in 2010 in hopes of winning back the seat in Congress that he has held for the past dozen years.

“I’ll be interested to see if there’s a rematch in two years,” Sabato said. “That’s bound to be a somewhat better year for Republicans.”