Posted on 11/08/2006 12:51:06 PM PST by areafiftyone
RICHMOND, Va. — Republican Sen. George Allen refused to concede defeat Wednesday, even as Democrat Jim Webb declared victory and began assembling a transition team.
With Republican Sen. Conrad Burns' loss in Montana, the Democrats would gain control of the Senate if Webb's lead holds. The margin between the two Virginia candidates was about 7,000 votes.
"The votes are in and we won," Webb declared. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Webb had 1,169,285 votes, or 49.6 percent, to Allen's 1,162,577, or 49.3 percent. Allen's campaign, however, said the Senator would wait for a full review of the Virginia vote.
"The conclusion of the canvass will be the final official results," said Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman and adviser to Allen.
Representatives from both campaigns and party officials were at polling places across Virginia as the canvass was under way. The state has until Nov. 14 to complete it, Gillespie said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Had Webb lost this race under the same scenario - we would be hearing Dem lawyers all over TV today challenging it.
That would probably explain it. At least my memory still works.
Another lost opportunity.
Don't know about the ballots. This is a big country so there are always some weird things that happen in every election, but there's a pattern developing in close elections of a last-minute surge of votes for Democrats that puts them in the lead. The same thing almost happened to Bush in Florida in 2000. I remember watching his 50,000 vote lead shrink to 537 in about 30 minutes at the end of the first machine vote count. It looks like all the accusations of GOP fraud by Dems are probably a deliberate diversion to take attention away from massive Democrat vote fraud.
"....almost all of the Fairfax County precincts were in early in the evening--226 of 229, but for the longest time the last three did not report."
I was following the State Electoral Board site and couldn't believe the exact flip after 99.16% of the vote had been counted. Someone on the VA thread said that it ws due to Arlington and Fairfax dumping their absentee counts. THey were named (something like) FFX Absentee Precinct(s) 10 and 11, referring to the respective Congressional Districts, I guess. We shall see. I think there will still be an automatic recount. Not overly optimistic, tho.
I used to work as an Chief of precinct for Fairfax County, their new electronic voting machines are quite fast at tabulating and typically, the results are handed off to the county executive building a couple of hours after the polls close. I can't understand why 3 precincts were lagging for reporting except they they might have had techincal difficulties.
Being a combat vet is VERY important when we're a nation at war. Having been the son of an NFL coach and being a quarterback in a Division 1 college football team ... that's plenty good in normal times. This is a big reason I'm squimish on Mitt Romney for 2008. His connection to the Olympics just isn't enough given how dangerous is the world we're in.
I sat up until 1:30 on the Virginia live thread last night trying to help keep the updates going. It was horrible to watch it fall apart...from a 29,000-vote Allen lead with over 90% of the precincts in, I kept going back to the SBE website and seeing which precincts were still out, and just kept getting that feeling of doom.
Richmond and Petersburg had a lot of precincts come in late and both of them went 70%+ for Webb. But it was the Fairfax absentees that put Webb over the top. From 1800 down to 2000 up, and the Richmond absentees (and a few others) got him to 7500 by the time I woke up this morning.
It's similar to what happened to Talent in MO. He was cruising along with a seemingly-solid lead, and then St. Louis precincts came in last (as they always seem to do) running 4:1 Rat, and boom.
}:-)4
Ah, if they were absentee precincts, that would explain the delay.
It is FAR too suspicious for the "put the Democrats over the top" precincts to come in disproportionately late.
In 04 I went to bed with Bush holding a 15 point lead over Kerry at 1AM but by morning bush had lost by 5. We know there was fraud in Detroit.
The canvasses will be reviewed starting this morning. But the vote won't be certified until 11/27.
Allen cannot ask for a recount until after that date.
Looking at Fairfax...my God, they had something like 27,000 absentee votes. That's out of 343,000 votes cast.
Central Absentee Precinct ( C008) - Allen 2433, Webb 4708, Parker 62, write-in 14
Central Absentee Precinct ( C010) - Allen 2766, Webb 4157, Parker 53, write-in 10
Central Absentee Precinct ( C011) - Allen 5240, Webb 7599, Parker 116, write-in 11
C008 and C010 were the ones that came in about midnight.
}:-)4
You would expect Detroit to go heavily for Kerry, but it's very suspicious the way these surges of heavily Democrat votes come in so late at the very end of the first machine count. That's what bothers me, and it keeps happening all over the country. We really need to improve our oversight of Democrat areas in 2008.
ohfercryinoutloud...I sure hadn't heard ~that one~ before...
Yes, we do, we have our dignity and our honesty.
If there are some legit concerns, fine, but this is starting to look like Allen is thinking of pulling a Gore/Gregoire.
Are absentee ballots done on a machine, or are they all done by hand ballot?
honesty? you are telling me the DISHONEST thing to do is investigate fraud?
and Gregoire stole that election by the way.
No, if he loses he's going to concede after the first canvassing is completed.
There is no hope. He's done. Chuckie Schumer is calling for Allen not to demand a recount.
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