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It’s taken a bit longer than expected to get official Lunenburg County election results. The reason for the delay, county officials said Tuesday, Nov. 12, was due to some provisional ballots. 

In Virginia, if you completely forget where your polling place is, you can still cast what’s known as a provisional ballot. That’s used when a voter’s eligibility or registration status can’t be immediately verified at the polling station. Those ballots are not counted on Election Day. First, the registrar’s office has to confirm a) where the person’s polling place is, b) that they haven’t already cast a ballot there and c) that the person in question is eligible to vote. And to do that, they need help from the state. 

“Provisional Same Day Registrations cannot be counted or rejected until after ELECT (State Elections Department) sends the duplicate report,” said Lunenburg County Registrar Alissa Baldwin. That report confirms if a provisional ballot is a duplicate or not. It doesn’t get sent out, however, until all counties turn in their requests. Once each county reports in about provisional ballots, those ballots are matched against state records and it’s determined if they are duplicates or not. 

“The deadline for everyone in the Commonwealth to enter the (provisionals) was 5 p.m. yesterday,” Baldwin said, adding that the report was expected at some point Tuesday, after press time for this edition. That means an official winner hasn’t been declared in a handful of races, due to the fact that provisional ballots were involved. 

“While Lunenburg only had 86 provisional ballots cast, we cannot adjudicate them until receipt of the statewide report,” Baldwin said, pointing out that some other jurisdictions had thousands of provisional ballots. 

What’s affected, what’s not

Now there are a few cases where we can confirm final results. Kenbridge and Victoria did re-elect their respective mayors. Those two races aren’t in question, as both Wanda Morrison in Kenbridge and Allen D. Smith in Victoria ran unopposed. Also running unopposed were Sandra Jones, Ronald Maddox and Christopher Gill, all of whom won re-election to the Victoria council last week. 

We are, however, waiting on confirmation about one of three Kenbridge town council seats. Both Paul Perusse and Mary Dayton won re-election, unopposed for their respective seats. But a third seat was write-in only and with 199 ballots cast in that race, election officials have to make sure each one is legitimate before declaring a winner. 

The winner in that race will fill the seat of former council member Alan Hersherberger, who resigned earlier this fall after filing to run for re-election. Hersherberger stands accused of knowingly possessing child porn. It was too late to remove his name from the ballot, so that’s why it’s a write-in only race. 

Provisionals in Lunenburg County election results

The provisionals won’t change who won things like the presidential race in Lunenburg, as national and state races were decided here by a wide margin. Donald Trump took 61% of the vote here in the county, with Kamala Harris collecting 38%. Trump of course went on to win the overall presidency last week. Lunenburg also came out in support of Republican Hung Cao in the U.S. Senate race, as he won the county with 58%. Tim Kaine won the overall race, however.