RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Two-and-a-half hours after Virginia polls closed, the mayoral race in Richmond was at a standstill with stalled reporting from the city’s registrar’s office.
Around 8 p.m., one hour after polls closed, the registrar’s office reported 6,731 votes cast in the mayoral race.
By 9:45 p.m., no update was reported.
Throughout this time the registrar reported incumbent Mayor Levar Stoney gained 33.23 percent of the vote — lifting above Kim Gray’s 30.16 percent, and Alexsis Rodgers’ 24.14 reported percent of the vote.
The reported votes for these candidates in the nine city council districts also were not updated during this time.
These figures are important in the mayoral race because a candidate wins by carrying a majority of votes in at least five of the nine city council districts, not the popular vote.
In a press conference detailing statewide operations of election day, the Virginia Department of Elections said the city’s results were published using an internal spreadsheet that would need to be updated.
A representative for Mayor Stoney’s office acknowledged the issue but did not comment further.
Showalter told 8News Reporter Laura Perrot on Wednesday that the numbers the state and the city reported were aggregated totals. She also learned that a handful of precincts didn’t transfer to the state system because the city’s upload stopped at midnight.
She said that the only place people can look for a district breakdown of the mayor is on the city’s website.
However, 8News observed those figures have still not been updated, providing an issue calculating what candidate carries each city council district.
“Once we get the canvass of the election off to a start, we will update the city system to reflect those numbers,” Showalter said. “Keep in mind, they are likely to change with the post-election absentee ballots yet to come.”
The city registrar’s office says the central absentee results are available on the Virginia Department of Elections website, and the Office of the General Registrar will report initial unofficial results later on Wednesday.
Showalter told 8News’ Dean Mirshahi that Wednesday’s results “will be far from final,” explaining that she doesn’t expect final results until next week due to a high volume of provisional ballots and an increase in absentee totals.
“We must, by law, accept absentee ballots mailed by Tuesday and postmarked that arrive with us by Friday noon. As such, the current absentee totals are likely to increase. It is difficult to know by exactly how much,” Showalter told 8News. “Combine that with the extraordinarily large number of provisional ballots that we have, I do not expect any final results until Tuesday of next week.”
Nov. 4 1:30 p.m. UPDATE: The current amount of votes reported in the Richmond mayoral race is on par with turnout from 2016. The VDE’s website shows that 101,648 have voted for mayor in 2020. At this time it is unclear how many votes are left to be counted.
Levar Stoney still has the most votes with 37.28%, Alexsis Rodgers has the second most with 26.88% and is closely followed by Kim Gray with 26.10%.
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