Our town held elections about a month ago for mayor and council. The incumbent mayor, who's been in the position for more than 20 years, was challenged for the first time in a long time. He came out one vote ahead of his challenger.
She, of course, filed for a recount. The recount happened today, and I went as the photographer for our paper along with a reporter. We had to have special permission from the presiding judge to have a camera in the courtroom. (If any other paper wants to use the images I shot, we are required to provide them--but we could charge.)
The process was interesting, and between two cameras, I shot more than 200 photos in less than two hours.
In the end, the challenger picked up seven votes. But so did the incumbent. So he still won by one vote (out of about 1200 cast).
The catch is that there were four ballots that were not valid because voters had entered the names of one of the two candidates (on the ballot already) in the write-in line. Under Virginia election law, those cannot be counted.
The challenger had three such write-ins and the incumbent had one. So if those counted, the challenger would have won.
Posted by JRC at June 4, 2004 10:56 PM | TrackBack