After legal challenge from Waynesboro Republicans, Virginia certifies 2024 election

The State Board of Elections, in the face of a half-baked effort of two Waynesboro Republicans to throw a vote-counting crotch block, has formally certified the results of the 2024 election.

Word on that came in the form of a press release from the Virginia Department of Elections on Monday.

The vote of the five-member board was unanimous, and followed certifications by local electoral boards across the Commonwealth.

The State Board vote followed a routine audit – called a risk-limiting audit – of votes in the First Congressional District and in the U.S. Senate race.

State code calls for an audit of votes in a randomly selected House district and one of the two U.S. Senate races, when there is a Senate race in a federal cycle.

The audit for the First District was held Nov. 21 using the batch comparison method with 19 randomly selected batches of ballots chosen, resulting in 137,627 ballots being hand counted in the audit.

The final verdict: we’re all good.

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ICYMI

• Waynesboro: Judge orders Republican electoral board members to certify 2024 election

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You may remember the frivolous lawsuit filed in Waynesboro in October that sought to overturn everything about this process, because the two Republican appointees to the Waynesboro Electoral Board, Curt Lilly and Scott Mares, didn’t understand anything about how votes are counted, and you know how Republicans are with things they don’t understand.

Lilly and Mares themselves filed suit in Waynesboro Circuit Court on Oct. 4 to assert their right to withhold certification of the 2024 election, claiming that the use of machines to count the vote was a violation of the Virginia Constitution.

A former state election commissioner, Edgardo Cortes, testified in a hearing that a holdup in Waynesboro resulting from Lilly and Mares withholding certification of the local election results could prevent the State Board of Elections from being able to certify the statewide vote for president and for the U.S. Senate, and the final result in the Sixth District congressional race.

Fortunately for democracy, Waynesboro Circuit Court Judge Paul A. Dryer, in a ruling issued on Nov. 4, on the eve of the election, ordered Lilly and Mares to certify the election in accord with their duties under the state code, writing in his court order that “the personal beliefs of members of a local board of elections cannot derail the electoral process for the entire Commonwealth.”