A recount just knocked Virginia’s statehouse out of Republicans’ hands — by a single vote By Andrew Prokop (vox.com) / Dec 19 2017
The recount of the vote tally for a key race in last month’s Virginia House of Delegates elections concluded on Tuesday. And incredibly enough, when the dust settled, the Democratic challenger led the Republican incumbent by just one vote — an outcome that would deprive Republicans of their majority in the chamber.
Yes, that’s right: A single vote in a single race appears to have tipped a chamber in Virginia’s state legislature from what looked like a 51-49 Republican majority to instead a 50-50 even split between the parties (if the current tallies in other races hold up).
The outcome in this district is expected to be certified by judges tomorrow, and Virginia Republicans aren’t fighting the results of the recount — they released a statement acknowledging that Shelley Simonds (D) had won.
There’s no tie-breaking procedure for the House of Delegates, so if the final result is 50-50, it seems that the parties will have to negotiate some sort of power-sharing agreement to determine how the chamber will function (who will be speaker, who will chair the committees, and so on). But this isn’t completely unprecedented — it happened in Virginia’s House of Delegates after the 1997 elections, and the parties did reach a deal in the end.
Back in November, during Virginia’s 2017 election night, it was clear Democrats had not only held the governorship but had made huge, stunning gains in the state’s House of Delegates — the lower chamber of the state legislature.
Yet it wasn’t clear exactly how huge those gains were — or whether they’d be sufficient to break the Republican Party’s hold on the chamber, because some close races were headed for recounts.
Going in, the GOP held a 66-to-34 majority. And when the dust settled after the initial days of vote counting, it looked like they had just barely held on to it. Democrats had flipped at least 15 GOP-held seats, far more than political analysts expected beforehand. Still, in initial tallies, Republican candidates led in races for 51 seats in the chamber, compared to 49 for Democrats.
But some of these races were remarkably close — particularly the one in the 94th District, representing the city of Newport News in the southeast of the state.
There, incumbent Delegate David Yancey (R) led his challenger Shelly Simonds (D) by a mere 10 votes heading into a recount. That’s the sort of margin that often shifts during a recount, due to errors in the initial tally.
So the recount for the 94th District took place Tuesday — with observers and lawyers from both campaigns, as well as many journalists, in attendance so as to prevent any mischief. And at the end, the margin shifted just enough to give Simonds the victory — 11,608 votes to 11,607.
That would flip a 16th GOP-held seat to the Democrats and put the House of Delegates at 50 seats for each party, if the current margins in the other races hold up.
However, it should be noted that there are still two more races that technically have not yet been resolved. In one, for the 68th District, a Democratic challenger, Dawn Adams, leads by 336 votes. A recount there will take place on Wednesday, but that’s a big enough lead that she’s expected to hold on to that pickup (and I’ve already counted her seat as a Democratic pickup for the purposes of this article’s tallies).
Then there’s controversy over a race in the 28th District. Republican candidate Bob Thomas won his race there by just 82 votes — but at least 147 people in the district were given the wrong ballot and voted with it, preventing their votes from being cast in this House of Delegates race. Democrats have sued and requested a new election be held, and the case is scheduled for a hearing on January 5.
So if the courts decide a new election should be held in this district, Democrats would have a chance to pick up a 51-vote House of Delegates majority outright in a special election. But of course we don’t yet know if that will happen.
For now, though, it’s clear that the GOP will no longer have a statehouse majority. And Republicans currently have just a 21-to-19-vote state Senate majority. (The state Senate wasn’t up for election this November, and won’t be until 2019.) So however things shake out, Democratic Gov.-elect Ralph Northam will have to deal with a very narrowly divided legislature to sign anything into law.
PB/TK – Relax DEM’ers, I know you’re not used to victories, but there’s no need to be dancing under the ticker-tape nor does this lead to any future speculation of a major comeback. You’ve got a loooooong way to go
