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Democratic congressional candidate Tom Perriello declared victory Friday in his neck-and-neck race with incumbent Fifth District Rep. Virgil Goode after a check of voting totals across the district gave Perriello a 745-vote edge.
"With the votes in and the extensive bipartisan canvass process effectively complete, the results are clear: Virginians want change in Washington to get this economy turned around," Perriello said Friday at his campaign office in Martinsville. "I am proud and humbled to be elected as the next congressman from the Fifth District of Virginia."
Goode, the six-term Republican incumbent who started the race up 30 points in the polls, refused to concede. With the margin of victory likely to result in a recount, the Rocky Mount native said he "will continue to fight to make sure that every single legitimate vote in the 5th District is accurately counted and reported."
At a press conference Friday at his Rocky Mount law office, Goode said he would wait for the state to certify the results on Nov. 24 before deciding to seek a recount.
Virginia does not mandate an automatic recount in close races, but candidates who lose by less than 1 percent of the vote can ask for a recount. If the margin is less than half a percentage point, the state will pay for the process, including lawyers' fees.
After the district-wide vote canvass completed Friday, Goode trailed Perriello by less than one-quarter of one percent, with 157,958 votes to 158,703 votes for Perriello.
Thursday began with Perriello clinging to a 31-vote lead. But a two-day canvass of the Charlottesville returns netted more than 650 votes for Perriello, giving him his first substantial lead in the race by the end of the day.
More adjustments on Friday — including a 100-vote reporting error in Albemarle County — put Perriello up by 745 votes with the canvassing effectively complete.
Perriello did not call on Goode to concede Friday, but sounded like a man getting ready to hit the ground running in Washington.
"In these tough economic times, it's time to roll up our sleeves and get things done for Southside and Central Virginians," Perriello said, promising to "work a double shift" to restore lost jobs in the district. "We have no time to waste."
Perriello tapped former Fifth District Rep. L.F. Payne to lead his transition effort.
Goode, meantime, sought to cast doubt on the canvass results, issuing a statement that "it has become clear that there have been a number of reporting irregularities — including the misplacement of paper ballets [sic] and tape records from electronic machines and miscalculations in vote tallies. In fact, almost 20% of all voting precincts in the district had reporting errors.'
"While current unofficial tallies have me trailing my opponent, these irregularities have cast doubt on the reported totals," Goode stated. "It is essential that we get to the bottom of these problems and insist on a thorough and proper vote counting process."
Of the 22 localities that are a part of the Fifth District, only two — Bedford City and Cumberland County — have not reported revisions to their Election Night ballot counts. It was the revised returns from Charlottesville, however, from Thursday that gave Perriello his first significant margin and prompted Goode to say at his press conference that "maybe we will have a Charlottesville miracle like my opponent."
Most of the uncounted Charlottesville ballots came from two precincts where voters had a choice of voting by paper ballots or on an electronic voting machines. According to Charlottesville officials, precinct captains at the two polling places did not telephone in the counts of the paper ballots on Election Night.
As a result, the canvass turned up an extra 411 votes for Perriello and 100 votes for Goode from the Jefferson Park precinct, and 244 votes for Perriello and 23 votes for Goode from the Carver precinct. Charlottesville also turned up 172 absentee ballots that were not counted on Election Night because they were not readable by the voting machines. Those ballots, plus 18 provisional ballots, produced more net votes for Perriello.
Overall, Charlottesville and Albemarle County produced overwhelming majorities for Perriello, with the Charlottesville Democrat rolling up a 25,592 vote margin from the two localities.
Perriello also carried Danville, Martinsville and the counties of Prince Edward, Brunswick, Buckingham, Fluvanna and Nelson. Goode ran strong in Pittsylvania, Bedford, Appomattox, Campbell and Franklin counties — carrying each locality with more than 60 percent of the vote — but Goode didn't win the southern part of the district by the same lopsided margins that he has in the past.
If the race goes to a recount, Goode will have to hope for better results than candidates in similar situations have experienced in the past. In 2005, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, State Senator Creigh Deeds, requested a recount after finishing behind eventual winner Robert McDonnell by 323 votes in a statewide election with almost two million ballots cast. The recount changed the final result by 37 votes.