Total Clusterfuck at BOEE!

LL blogs to you live from the Board of Elections and Ethics at One Judiciary Square, where representatives of the Evans, Mara, Schwartz, and Silverman campaigns are hopping mad over irregularities in tonight’s election results.

Essentially, tallies show an abnormally large number of write-in votes in several races, and a discrepancy between the number of votes cast and the number of votes counted.

According to the Evans campaign, only an estimated 4,200 voters cast ballots in ward 2. However, tallies show over 9,000 votes cast. That includes more than 1,500 write-in votes, an unheard of number. Jack Evans himself, on the scene, speculates that the board mistakenly added Statehood Green write-ins to the Democratic total.

Board staffers are currently huddled behind closed doors. Dan Murphy, board spokesperson, says staffers are about to begin a full review of the numbers.

UPDATE, 11:10 P.M.: More than 40 have gathered here in the hallway and lobby at BOEE, including Cary Silverman, Evans lawyer Bill Jarvis, local Democratic chair Anita Bonds, and at least 15 Silverman supporters. Forget the Brooks Brothers riot—it’s the green t-shirt riot! And Tommy Wells just showed. “I’m here to check on our guys,” says Wells, who is not running this year.

UPDATE, 11:20: The voting situation hasn’t stopped the D.C. Republicans from declaring Mara a winner. Statement: “As Chairman of the DC Republican Party, I am proud to work for a Party that can unite behind Patrick Mara.  DC Republicans are united behind our candidates and we will push them to victory in November,” stated DC Republican Committee Chairman Robert J. Kabel. BOEE about to speak.

UPDATE, 11:35: Murphy says the problems have been traced to the optical scan tally in a single precinct, No. 141, at the Reeves Center. It is unclear whether that precinct is in Ward 1, Ward 2, or both. In any case, the new results initially look clean. Says Wells, “The explanation doesn’t make any sense, but the results look normal.”

None of the preliminary results have changed. Mara and Evans have declared victory; Silverman has not conceded. “Not while there’s still precincts out,” he says. “We can’t say anything until we know what’s going on here. This is a mess. Too many questions.”

UPDATE, 11:45 PM: LL out!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 10:31 pm and is filed under DCision '08, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.