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Judges have decided the outcome of a Virginia Beach state House recount, determining that a Republican candidate was the winner, according to the Associated Press.
Karen Greenhalgh was determined the winner of the November 2 election in the state and will represent the 85th District in the Virginia House of Delegates, the AP said. She beat Democratic incumbent candidate Alex Askew in the race. Although Askew gained an additional 12 votes in the recount, he was still 115 votes behind Greenhalgh.
The recount of the 85th District election was one out of two that state Democrats requested. The next recount between Democratic candidate Martha Mugler and Republican candidate A.C. Cordoza will take place next week, but Greenhalgh's win solidified a Republican takeover of the House, according to the AP. Republicans are now holding 51 seats out of 100.
According to the AP, there was only one contested ballot in the recount, which was ultimately thrown out due to the intent of the ballot being unclear. There were approximately 20,000 ballots that were sorted through during the recount. Officials were also sorting through 54,000 early voting and mail-in ballots that were cast before Election Day. Out of that number, around 8,000 ballots were for the 85th District election.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Askew and fellow Democratic Delegate Martha Mugler of the 91st District requested recounts after certified results from the November 2 election showed their GOP challengers leading by razor-thin margins. The recount in the 91st District, which covers the cities of Hampton and Poquoson, and York County, is expected to take place next Tuesday and Wednesday.
Republicans—who won 52 districts, according to the certified results—have said they are confident their candidates' leads will hold.
Throughout the day Thursday and into Friday, people packed into a room on the second floor of an elections building in Virginia Beach as the ballots from the 85th District were fed into the two scanning machines. Groups of people sat at tables and scrutinized any ballots that were determined by the machines to have write-in candidates, were not clearly marked or had some other issue.
Jeffrey Marks, the GOP chair of the city's electoral board, said Thursday night that both sides will present challenge ballots to the panel, and the judges will decide how each challenge ballot should be counted.
Virginia's top elections official, Chris Piper, has said the recounts are unlikely to change the outcomes of the races because of the size of the margins. Both Askew and Mugler would have to win for the House to be tied 50-50, forcing Democrats and Republicans to hash out a power-sharing agreement.
Before her recount, Mugler trailed Republican A.C. Cordoza by 94 votes out of 27,388 counted. The Associated Press hasn't called either race.
Both Mugler and Askew are incumbent freshmen who were first elected in 2019 when Democrats flipped both the House and Senate.
Recounts in Virginia are not automatic and must be requested. Because the margins in the Askew-Greenhalgh and Mugler-Cordoza races were under 0.5 percent, the costs will be covered by the state.
