In the special election being held today to determine who will succeed Barbara Comstock in the Virginia House of Delegates, problems caused by the snowstorm in Northern Virginia have been compounded by equipment failures and ballot shortages.[read_more]
According to one source observing the election closely on behalf of Republicans, “several” Fairfax County precincts in the 34th district have run out of ballots completely—even though turnout percentages are in the single digits, both because special election turnout is usually below normal and because of inclement weather for most of the day.
Making matters worse, in at least one of those locations the electronic touchscreen machines that would normally serve in a backup capacity in the event of a shortage in paper ballots (and which otherwise serve primarily as the machines available to visually impaired or other disabled voters) were both broken. This resulted in a complete stoppage of voting. It is unclear at this time whether any voters were turned away.
Our source has indicated that in other instances, supplemental ballots have been delivered to address shortages. This is confirmed by Fairfax County Electoral Board Secretary Brian Schoeneman, who tweeted the following a few minutes ago:
We've had a few precincts running low on ballots – have extra ballots otw, and our ExpressVote machines as backup. Good problem to have!
— Brian W. Schoeneman (@BrianSchoeneman) January 6, 2015
Stay tuned for developments. We’ve inquired with Schoeneman for more details and will post updates. In the meantime, if you live in the 34th, MAKE SURE YOU VOTE FOR CRAIG PARISOT before the polls close at 7:00 pm! This is an extremely low turnout election, meaning your vote is absolutely critical—especially when there are irregularities.
UPDATE 1: From Schoeneman:
.@BullElephant Confirmed. It was 311 Langley. We got extra ballots out there, and we're sending more out again. Working on ExpressVote BMDs.
— Brian W. Schoeneman (@BrianSchoeneman) January 6, 2015
Let’s hope no one was turned away in the interim.
UPDATE 2: More, suggesting minimal impact:
.@BullElephant Fortunately Langley is colocated with 301 Chain Bridge, so they are sharing ballot marking devices and ballots.
— Brian W. Schoeneman (@BrianSchoeneman) January 6, 2015
.@BullElephant We've got an additional 200 ballots headed over there now. They report 5 people in line and 35 ballots on hand.
— Brian W. Schoeneman (@BrianSchoeneman) January 6, 2015
