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As of Thursday night, the numbers changed, but the result stayed the same. And yet, the 5th District Republican primary will keep going, as incumbent Bob Good says he doesn’t plan to concede. After Thursday’s round of provisional ballot counting, challenger John McGuire had 31,397 votes, 313 more than Good’s 31,084. 

“This race remains too close to call. We are in a period where the law provides a process for evaluating the accuracy of all the vote totals from Election Day to ensure everyone can have full confidence in the certified results,” Good said in a statement. “Provisional ballots and mail-in ballots are also still to be counted. We are asking for full transparency from the officials involved and patience from the people of the 5th District over the coming weeks as the certification of results is completed. We believe we can still prevail.”

Not much has changed since counties started counting provisional ballots in the race. Good has received 16 additional votes, while McGuire added 20. In a statement Thursday on social media, Good argued that he wanted to make sure every vote was counted. 

“Everyone should want a fair and accurate count of every legal vote that reflects the intent of the legitimate participating voters of the 5th District,” Good said. “We are fighting to ensure that is true.” 

Good said that he and his team had implemented “the best early voting operation that the 5th District has ever seen,” so he wanted to wait for all the mail-in and provisional ballots to come in before taking the next step. 

“We are doing what we can to ensure we have teams of observers and legal counsel to ensure all the votes are properly counted in the coming days,” Good said. 

What is Good waiting on?

To be clear, in order for Bob Good to possibly win, he would need more than 75% of all remaining known provisional ballots to go his way. The only unknown here is if any ballots were mailed in on Primary Day and show up by this Friday. All mail-in ballots that were postmarked by June 18 and arrive by the end of the day on June 21 will be counted. If Good is determined to hold out until all of those are counted, then the race will likely keep going until at least Monday, depending on how many mail-ins there are to count. 

Now he can’t wait forever, as Good is on the clock right now. Due to the fact the margin of victory is less than 1%, under Virginia law he is allowed to call for a recount. But in Virginia, there are no automatic recounts. He has to ask for one and do it within 10 days of the election. 

Speaking Thursday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Good claimed he will call for a recount once all the votes have been counted.

“We’re going to have a full recount. We’re going to have a full investigation,” Good said. “It’s going to stretch out for a couple of weeks. We’ve got lawyers at the ready, thankfully, a tremendous number of lawyers at our disposal, many who are ready to help us.”

Making allegations in 5th District

He also made allegations on the podcast, claiming that in Albemarle County, officials were counting votes “two hours before they were supposed to.” Good claimed his observers weren’t told an early count was starting, but alleged that McGuire’s people were.

“We don’t know what took place during those two hours,” he said on the podcast.

He has given no evidence this alleged early count took place. The Herald has reached out to the Albemarle registrar’s office for comment.

After the podcast was released, Good went on his social media accounts and made more accusations.

“We had 3 “fires” on election day in 3 precincts, all requiring the precincts to be evacuated for 20 minutes. Albemarle County, Hanover County, and Lynchburg City,” Good wrote. “What is the probability? Does anyone recall even 1 fire at a precinct on election day?”