Drake joins suit over absentee ballots; Perriello’s margin over Goode grows
Her re-election chances resting on uncounted absentee ballots, Rep. Thelma Drake, R-2nd, has joined the McCain-Palin campaign in a lawsuit seeking to count absentee ballots by military personnel serving overseas.
Drake, a Republican, trails Democrat Glenn C. Nye III by 7,916 votes in the district in and around Virginia Beach. Nye has claimed victory, but Drake has not conceded because she says the count of the district's 28,000 absentee ballots continued yesterday.
Meanwhile in the 5th Congressional District, Democrat Tom S.P. Perriello, who started the day leading Republican Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. by 31 votes, had a 639-vote lead by the end of the day after post-election canvassing by local electoral boards. At one point during the day Perriello was up by 832 votes.
A recount is likely because the margin is still below the 1 percent threshold that allows the trailing candidate to seek a recount.
It is unclear how many absentee ballots are at stake in the McCain-Palin suit, which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Richmond.
In the suit McCain-Palin and now Drake contend that absentee ballots were not mailed overseas in time for the ballots to be returned by election day, Nov. 4. This contradicts a federal law, lawyers for McCain-Palin argue.
U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams has told the State Board of Elections to keep all the absentee ballots until the matter is resolved. He is expected to consider the case Monday.
Lawyers for the State Board of Elections have filed a motion to dismiss the case. They contend that state law provides that absentee ballots may be counted only if they are received before the polls close, which was 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The motion for dismissal notes that the state would not allow 299 unofficial paper ballots cast in Chesterfield County, when polling places ran out of ballots during the Democratic primary on Feb. 12, because state law did not allow it.
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