Thoughts on 2021 Election

    Last night's election results were not what I hoped to see, but the voters have spoken and we now have a new political reality to navigate over the next four years.  We saw the highest turnout for a Virginia Governor's election in a long time and that was a good thing.  Many voters took advantage of the new laws we passed in the last two years making it easier to vote and I hope every agrees that democracy works better when more people participate. 

    Voters in the 36th District voted for the Democratic Ticket by over 20% margin - probably closer to 25% if early votes were counted by precinct.  Only 4 of the 47 precincts I represent voted for the Republican gubernatorial nominee and if early votes were returned to their precincts, probably closers to two.  The Republican message did not resonate with a majority of 36th District voters or for that matter Northern Virginia.

Why I Hate Electronic Voting Machines

Today’s battle over the “missing” Fairfax County 8^th Congressional District absentee votes has given me flashbacks.  

In 2009, I was chairman of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee.  Gerry Connolly was elected to Congress in 2008.  In January, 2009, Sharon Bulova was elected Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in a special election. 

Upon her resignation, a special election was held for Braddock District Supervisor.  John Cook and Illryong Moon faced off on who would represent Braddock District's 100,000 citizens.   As we waited for the votes to come in, everyone was waiting for the votes to come in for the largest (and Democratic leaning) precinct in the district – Fairview – while margin between the candidates stood under at 70 votes.  If Fairview Precinct gave Mr. Moon the same margin it gave President Obama in 2008, it would change the result of the election.

While I was waiting at the victory party, I received a phone call from one of my former Mt. Vernon District Precinct Captains, Michael Gropman, who had moved to Fairview and was inside the polling place.

He told me there were two touch screen voting machines (technically called "Direct Recording Electronic Machines" or "DRE’s") in the precinct and that the “master” machine that communicates wirelessly with all machines in the precinct and tabulates the entire precinct's vote was spitting out tapes that were causing the precinct vote totals to be nearly double the total number of voters that had passed through the precinct that day.

The machines were examined.  After it was determined they could not produce accurate results, they were turned off, sealed and taken to the Fairfax County Government Center.  Mike met me at the victory party.  We went into a booth and I took a recorded statement from him about what he had observed.  I was concerned litigation was coming. 

We arrived the following day for the Canvass.
  

Thank You 44th District!

On Tuesday, November 5, 18,387 of the 44th District's 80,000 residents participated in the 2013 Election.  Seventy-one percent of them chose to give me the honor of continuing to represent our community in Richmond.

Since I was first elected in 2009, the long-term improvement of the U.S. 1 Corridor has been my number one priority and it will continue to be. The extension of the Yellow Line is the long-term solution to redevelopment on U.S. 1.

The U.S. 1 Corridor is projected to add 40,000 new residents and 17,000 new jobs in the next 30 years. We need to lay the groundwork for moving those people now.

NOVA v. ROVA = Massachusetts v. Georgia?

Tom Jackman has an interesting analysis up on The State of NOVA blog comparing results in Northern Virginia v. the rest of the Commonwealth and looking at differences in Virginia exit poll results from 2008 and 2012.  Not Larry Sabato (Ben Tribbett) also recently started a series on his blog comparing House of Delegate electoral margins to different states to give some perspective to how different Virginia is.  I thought I'd take a shot at merging both.

Defining NOVA as Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, including Fairfax City, Falls Church City, Manassas City and Manassas Park and using the Unofficial Results (not including the Fairfax County absentees & provisional votes (over 90,000 votes).  Here were the margins:

• President Obama's wins NOVA by 21.4% (60.7% v. 39.3%)
• Governor Romney's margin in the "Rest of Virginia" or ROVA was 3.4% (48.3% v. 51.7%). 

If you compare that to other states, NOVA's margin sits between Massachusetts and California and ROVA's margin sits between North Carolina and Georgia (see chart below from Nate Silver at the New York Times).  Well I knew that Massachusetts was a Commonwealth like Virginia, but I did not realize we also had that much in common politically.  Quite a juxtaposition which perhaps gives you some perspective about our challenges in Richmond.

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