Don’t have to worry about voter apathy, because people who otherwise could care less won’t find it a bother if they are “democrat” to sign their name to a form handed to them by democrats.

Absentee ballots are no longer restricted to people who can’t make it to the polls, regardless of what the law states. My guess is that if you had called every house that submitted an absentee ballot on Tuesday, over half the people would have been in their homes, available to vote.

I don’t know, and we’ll probably never know, if there was any actual fraud, although absentee ballots certainly have the possibility for fraud.

On another question — the special election was really a rushed thing. How hard was it for military folks to get ballots and vote them for an election like this? Is it possible there were simply a lot fewer republican absentee military votes than usual?

I’ve noted absentee votes are usually split more evenly along party lines. An even number of 800 absentee votes for one candidate, and only 395 votes for the other leads me to believe some of those absentee voters might be absentee for a reason - like maybe they don’t even live in the district, or even exist.

OK, people, get to work.

You are on to something. I seriously question the validity of the absentee ballot count. I have never seen anything like this in any NOVA election. Something ACORN-esque happened here.

So the overall margin is 51% to 49% and largest precinct delta is 924 - LONDON TOWNE WEST, 64% to 36%, yet the Abstenee votes break %66 to %33% (~1% write in).

Does anyone else smell something fishy or is this normal?

Hard to see this as an upset in any event. It is a Democratic district that had only remained in Republican hands because of Ken Cuccinelli’s very formidable political skills. And he only held the seat in 2007 by 100 votes against a poor Democratic candidate who ran a less than stellar campaign. He could quite easily have lost in 2007.

If any outcome could have been called an upset it would have been Hunt winning.

I don’t know if commercials by Hunt would have helped or not. Northern Virginia has trended democrat, and in my mind was the only negative of Ken winning the AG race, that we would likely lose his seat.

Now Marsden gets to be the deficit-hawk tax-cutter that he promised to be in his commercials.

Even better news for Virginians is that Democrats have the votes to block every chicken-shit attempt McDonnell makes to put TOLLS on our roads or sell off the operating rights to the Port of Virginia to the his multinational corporate backers.

Perhaps less noticed was the Eighth District, where the Republican, Jeff McWaters, a former health insurance gatekeeper who has spent about a million dollars on this race and the primary, only got 8,051 voters to show up, in a District that typically saw 15,000 voters, even when the Republican was unopposed.

Democrat, Dr. Bill Fleming, declared his candidacy the day before the filing deadline and in just two weeks was able to mobilize a respectable 2, 184 voters to come out on a cold January day and vote for him.

Bill Fleming has reawakened the Virginia Beach Democrats. The Eighth District will not likely be described as, ” safe for Republicans” in the next regular elections.

Virginians owe a debt of gratitude to all of the candidates. It takes a great deal to run for office these days. I encourage Republicans and Democrats to nag the crap out of their Delegates and Senators to pass the following comprehensive campaign finance reforms (feel free to cut and paste into your own emails to your Reps)

If we want the voices of the citizens of each district to again be heard by elected officials, we must take the following steps:

1. Restrict contributions to come only from citizens whose PRIMARY residence is within the district. This simple, yet dramatic revision, would amplify the voices of the citizens who reside in the respective districts, and restore the representative relationship between our elected officials and the citizens who reside in their areas of representation.

2. Eliminate PAC contributions.

3. Eliminate corporate contributions. Corporations are profit-making entities whose by-laws mandate that they expend money only with the expectation of a return on that investment. Corporations, in spite of their public relations propaganda exist only to make money and are not, “corporate citizens.” Only People are citizens.

4. Cap the amount of contributions to the federal limit for an individual contribution.

Write to your Delegate and Senator and tell them that campaign finance reform will dramatically reduce corruption and will enhance the ability of the individual citizen to be heard. If they do not support reform, then work for a candidate in the next election who pledges to enact campaign finance reforms as enumerated above.

The one thing that bothers me about these returns is the lopsided absentee ballot vote…..hmmmm….wonder what happened there?