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Yes, there will be a recount in the Congressional 5th District Republican primary. And it’ll take place within the next two weeks.

For those just joining us, Virginia State Sen. John McGuire won June’s primary with 31,583 votes to incumbent Bob Good’s 31,209. Good argued there were flaws in how the results were counted, pointing to issues in Lynchburg as one example. He requested a recount and this past week, a judge agreed with him. On Thursday, July 18, Goochland County Circuit Court Chief Judge Claude Worrell said Good met all the requirements for the request to move forward. Worrell set the recount for Aug. 1, with the counting to begin at 7:30 a.m. 

Under Virginia law, a three-judge panel oversees the recount. The first judge is always the chief judge of the circuit court where the recount request was filed. Good’s attorneys filed their request on July 12 in Goochland County, so that means Worrell is one of the judges. The other two are appointed by Chief Justice Bernard Goodwyn of the Virginia Supreme Court. He’s chosen Judge Christopher Papile of Newport News and Judge Christopher Clemens of Salem to fill out the three-person panel. 

Worrell is in charge of setting rules for the recount. Based on his order filed Monday, July 22, registrars in all 24 of the district’s localities will be recounting votes. First, the registrar’s office has been ordered to flag all ballots with overvotes, undervotes or write-ins. Those will all be hand-counted. The same goes for any ballot that was hand-counted on Election Day. Any ballots set aside or not accepted by the scanner, those also will be hand-counted. 

Order after 5th District Republican primary

When issuing his order, Worrell ordered registrars in each of the counties to get prepared. Multiple registrars in local counties told us there’s a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. 

“There will be forms to prepare for documenting the process, scanner voting machines will need to be programmed for this contest and tested with Logic and Accuracy, training of recount officials, and more,” said Lunenburg County Registrar Alissa Baldwin, adding that she hadn’t received the judge’s full order yet. “Once I have the Order, that can be followed with the preparations set forth under state law for recounts and contested elections. I will know more after receipt and review of the order. The Chief Judge already indicated at the preliminary hearing that it will be a one-day recount starting at 7:30 a.m. but until I know how many recount teams the order establishes; I cannot narrow down an estimated completion time for Lunenburg.” 

And that estimated completion time, along with the number of recount teams ordered, helps determine how much the recount will cost a county. Now to be clear, counties aren’t paying for this out of pocket. The same goes for the commonwealth. In a recount, the state pays in cases where the margin of victory is less than or equal to 0.5%. For any other requested recounts, the candidate has to put up the funds. Based on the certified results in the 5th District Republican primary, McGuire’s margin of victory stands at 0.6%, meaning Good will need to cover the cost. If he wins the recount, that money will be refunded. 

What if there’s a disagreement?

So what happens if a registrar’s staff can’t agree if a vote is valid during the recount? Then it goes to this three judge-panel we mentioned earlier, which will decide. And there will be no argument about the chain of custody. Under Worrell’s order, sheriff’s deputies from the respective counties will take all contested ballots at the end of the recount to the Goochland Courthouse. The three judges will go over each contested ballot and issue a decision. 

Each of the candidates is also allowed to have an observer in place to witness the recount in every county. That’s one person per group. This observer can sit behind the registrar’s staff or to the side. But they can’t interfere, they can’t touch any of the ballots. They’re only legally allowed to watch and take notes. If they have a question, it has to be directed to the person in charge of the recount, nobody else. Observers also can’t stop the recount or interrupt it in any way to ask their question. As for the registrar and their staff, they’re not allowed to block the view of the observer. 

Why recount in 5th District Republican primary? 

In his request, Good had to present a reason for a recount. He had to claim there was a malfunction with the equipment or some other reason that the ballots were not counted correctly.

We’ve seen him try to make this case in recent weeks. Good won in Lynchburg, with 58.1% of the vote, but issues raised by both sides of one Republican primary for a city council seat drew concern. In press releases and social media posts by both city council candidates, there were questions about the Lynchburg ballot drop box, which both city campaigns say was left unlocked and open, with ballots being found inside at noon on Friday and then counted, despite it being three days after the primary. To be clear, there were only seven ballots found inside on that Friday, not enough to change the results. 

The campaigns said they also witnessed confusion from electoral board members and staff over the proper process to count votes. One of the city council candidates, Peter Alexander, sent out a statement saying “records show that ballot box seals were broken and absentee ballot processing started before our observer was permitted access to watch the process.”

Good has also made allegations about the vote in Buckingham County, where McGuire won with 621 votes to Good’s 485. 

“The election data in (Buckingham) is a disaster, and they have been fighting our efforts to review and assess the results,” Good wrote in an earlier email to supporters. He didn’t explain further what qualified as a ‘disaster’ when it comes to the data.

Current Buckingham registrar Ginger Chiesa at the time said she had no comment about Good’s statement. 

Looking for funding

The reason Good sent out an email this weekend to his supporters is because he needs money. The question remains how much. Worrell set the cost of the recount last week at an estimated $96,500. But Good made a different claim in his fundraising email. 

“We have an updated estimate of the cost for the recount challenge, and it will be about $150,000, including legal fees, or nearly double the first estimate we received,” Good wrote in his email to supporters. 

To date, no one outside of Good’s campaign has been able to confirm that $150,000 number as the cost or why it would suddenly jump from the original $96,500, which was set just last Thursday. But again, the cost can vary depending on the length of the recount and the number of recount teams involved, as Baldwin mentioned earlier. 

In an email sent out over the weekend to his supporters, Good said regardless of the cost, he was determined to get every vote counted. 

“We will be working to correct mistakes and errors that affected the results that were reported. We will be working to challenge irregularities, failures to follow required procedures and failures to protect or ensure the integrity of the ballots,” Good wrote. “We will be working to include ballots that should have been counted. And we will be seeking a hand recount that matches the paper ballots to the reported machine results.”