Republican Party of Virginia attorney general candidate Chuck Smith wants a recount after narrowly losing the nomination to Delegate Jason Miyares (R-Virginia Beach.) Smith is concerned about problems in the third round of ballot counting when candidate Jack White’s votes were allocated to Miyares and Smith.
“In the third round in the attorney general’s race there was a lot of confusion in and among the tellers counting in the third round, with ballots counted for me attributed to the Miyares stack and ballots counted for Miyares attributed to the stack for me,” Smith wrote in a press release sent to reporters on Monday.
Smith cited a need for transparency and counting integrity. He said, “I understand that there is less than a three percent difference in the nomination results in this race between the candidates.”
However, official results show that Miyares won in the third round with 51.7 percent against Smith’s 48.3 percent, a 3.4 percent difference. In a press release, the Republican Party of Virginia said the rules of the convention don’t allow for recounts unless the margin between the winning candidate and the second-place candidate is one percent or less.
“As evidenced by the results, the margin by which Mr. Smith trailed Delegate Miyares is more than three times greater than that threshold, meaning a recount is not permissible under the Rules of the 2021 RPV State Convention,” the release states.
“Under the Rules governing this process, Mr. Smith does not qualify for a recount because the contest for Attorney General is significantly outside the one percent margin,” RPV Acting General Counsel Lee Goodman said.
RPV Chairman Rich Anderson said, “Having not met the threshold for a recount, I sincerely hope that Chuck will withdraw his request for a recount and unite behind Jason Miyares and the rest of the 2021 Republican ticket. There’s too much at stake to delay a unified effort to restore accountable, conservative government to the people of Virginia.”
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and the Star News Digital Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Chuck Smith” by Chuck Smith.Â
