2017 Virginia HoD Thread

[Virginiá]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/transgender-candidate-far-outpaces-incumbent-va-delegate-in-fundraising-reports-show/2017/07/18/57356d30-6bb3-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html

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Considering her fundraising success and that this is a district Clinton won pretty comfortably in, she might just have a chance at ousting this guy.

[Virginiá]

Got to win at least one State Senate seat in 2019.

I'll lose my mind if Democrats can't win back the state Senate in 2019. Assuming they hold the Lt Gov office, we're only talking about one seat. Ideally, if Trump is still this unpopular in 2019, Democrats should have a reasonable shot at upwards of 3 or more seats. 2019 will be a very low turnout affair, and that is the kind of election where Democrats can really dominate under Trump.

[Virginiá]

Obligatory DailyKos post on HoD seats from a liberal perspective:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/5/1711514/-Key-precincts-will-tell-the-tale-is-it-an-average-night-for-Virginia-House-Dems-or-a-great-night

[Virginiá]

Skill, when do you think the recounts will be completely finished?

[Virginiá]

Idk. I think 2019 could be even better for VA Dems. Think of all the other special elections we've had under similar conditions as 2019 is likely to have. Highly energized Dems and malaised Republicans leading to a bloodbath. Believe it or not, it looks like Gillespie might have saved Republicans from totally losing the HoD by getting more Republican voters to turnout than they did in 2009 and 2013.

Yeah, I think I have to agree with this one. As far as I know, most if not all of these districts were Clinton district or maybe a couple marginal Trump districts. They wouldn't be impossible to hold. I also think it's reasonably possible the HoD has a slightly altered map by 2019 due to some ongoing map-related lawsuit(s), which would soften up Republicans even more.

[Virginiá]

@heatcharger: Do you know if DK or anyone else will put out Northam's win by state Senate district? This would good to look out for 2019. There are already a bunch of Republican-held Clinton districts, but I'm curious if Northam picked up any new ones. I'd expect at least one or two.

[Virginiá]

Even a temporary Democratic majority and the possibility of a turncoat state Senate Republican provides for some interesting possibilities, legislation-wise. The VAGOP's viability at this point fully rests on them never letting the entire state government fall into Democrats' hands for even a few hours.

[Virginiá]

No, it isn't.

Having a new election after a significant period of time and a legal recall process is far different from attempting to delegitimize an election, block its' certification, and hold a new one. For starters, one option is allowed in most states, while the other is a tool generally employed by authoritarian governments.

Again, the Nevada recall elections are different from the Scott Walker case how? The Virginia elections are analogous to either how?

1. Screwing up who gets a ballot relevant to their district to the tune of 120+ voters where the margin of victory was less than 100 votes does seem like an adequate reason to hold a special election for the seat, even if only on the fringes of what would be acceptable. If the number of people who received the wrong ballot was less than the winning margin of the victor, then no, since it wouldn't make a difference in the winner, it wouldn't be ok, even if it is wrong of the state to screw that up in the first place.

But if you disagree, and think that regardless of the people who got the wrong ballots, the election should stand, where is your threshold? How many people would have to get the wrong ballot for you to say a new election must be held?

2. With Regards to Nevada, what is a significant amount of time to you? Nicole Cannizzaro and Joyce Woodhouse were up in 2016, and Republicans failed to unseat them, and now are seeking a redo just a year later, even despite the fact that Republicans control the Governors office, and thus there is less tangible reasons to want to recall these Democrats, as Democrats haven't been able to run buck wild passing all sorts of legislation they want. This is slightly different as opposed to Walker, who had a unified Republican government after 2012 (read below on my thoughts on Walker's recall)

Given current rules, there is probably a justifiable reason to want to recall Patricia Farley, who defected from Republicans, thus undermining the will of the voters who put her in office in 2014. However, she isn't even running again in 2018, so this kind of seems pointless.

Personally, I don't think recall elections should be abused like this. They should be limited to instances of corruption, gross impropriety or other major issues of the sort. Republicans are blatantly using this to as a partisan play to gain some seats. It would be pretty sad for political parties to turn to recalls immediately after an election just because they are upset with the results. I forget exactly what Walker did, and I would support recalling any politician over something like gerrymandering (as I consider that a form of corruption and/or election rigging), but passing anti-union legislation isn't grounds for a recall. So I would concede that wasn't right. To that effect, I hope Nevada's recall process is changed ASAP to prevent further abuse by either party. This is not the right way to handle losing general elections, and it sets a bad precedent.

[Virginiá]

Welp looks like yancy may hold on by 1-6 votes.
Shows every vote counts.

GOP sweatin like a dog

I wonder if Simonds ended up winning by 1 vote, if Greedo would cry fraud. It's in line with his philosophy that it is because of voter fraud when a Democrat wins by a small number of votes.

[Virginiá]

Considering the VA HoD map is a GOP gerrymander, come 2020 if the Dems have a trifecta, even a fair map will be devastating for the VA GOP.

This is why I was saying that when you consider the timing of this, once the Virginia Republicans lose power, it'll probably be for a long time - maybe until there is another realignment. Post-2019 elections in 2020, Democrats will push through extensive changes to election law, implementing same-day reg, auto reg, early voting, the works. This is on top of whatever they do with redistricting.

[Virginiá]

Move elections to Presidential years?

I would love for them to move all their state elections to presidential/midterm years, but I'm not entirely sure if they will. I don't know if it's in their platform or anything, but looking at a place like New Jersey, it's entirely possible they could keep it if they think it doesn't really matter.

Although I would argue that of course it matters. Not only would it save money to merge it with existing federal elections, but it would reduce the advantage of older/whiter/wealthier voters, particularly in the off-off year legislative elections, where turnout plunges into the 20s%.

[Virginiá]

Not commenting on the validity of the ballot, but:

Different then the VA issue.
That person wrote in lizard people for president and senate so I’m going to guess that person is a troll.
This Virginia ballot is a typo why would someone vote for Gillespie Vogel and Adams then vote dem for the HOD? They saw they filled in the wrong box and fixed it.

Huh? You honestly think people never split their ballots at the state level? There are endless examples of Governors winning by big margins that, by your logic, should completely sweep the entire legislature because the Governor won by like 60 - 70%. People split their ballots all the time. Not all Democrats or Republicans vote straight ticket, and in some cases there are substantial cross over votes. Wyoming or Hawaii 2006 are good examples, but there are many, many more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_gubernatorial_election,_2006
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_gubernatorial_election,_2006

If those Freudenthal voters voted straight Democrat as you are implying they should (as it makes no sense not to?), the entire legislature would have flipped with that margin.

No other box was filled for governor plus why would someone voted for LG and AG but not governor?
This is clearly a Gillespie/Vogel/Adams/Yancey ballot.

Again, not liking the choices for Governor is not an odd thing. I'm sure it happens in just about every gubernatorial election there is. It happens bigly in some presidential elections too, where people basically vote for everything but POTUS. 2016 is a good example.

[Virginiá]

Deciphering the intent on that ballot is beyond absurd. I could come up with several justifications with varying degrees of plausibility for either side. It's impossible to be certain they wanted to vote for one candidate or the other.

I would be confident in the judge's decision if the Gillespie bubble didn't also have a strike through it. That makes it impossible to truly know. If it had no issues, we could safely assume they just accidentally voted for Simonds and crossed it out, since everything else was Republican. But since they crossed out Gillespie (a Republican), it makes it ambiguous.

Also, I can't help but note that a bunch of Republican judges who are elected by the General Assembly may have a bit of a bias towards being generous in their interpretation of Republican ballots in such a close election with such huge ramifications. This is why I hate any system where a judge is basically "elected," whether by the people or the GA. It creates an incentive to cast favorable rulings knowing that those people (the voters or lawmakers) will remember whose side they chose.

[Virginiá]

Either way, even if Republicans do hold this seat in the end, it isn't the biggest loss. They will still control the state Senate regardless, and 50-50 gives more power to Democrats but not total power. I'm not entirely sure if there would be a big policy difference with a 50R-50D vs 51R-49D HoD.

Virginia Republicans are still favored to lose the legislature in 2019 (imo), so eventually the dam is going to break and Virginia's policy direction will veer towards the left.

[Virginiá]

There is a huge different between split and GOP control. GOP gets to control all committees and determines what bills get to the floor. GOP can make sure Medicaid expansion never gets to the floor along with a host of other reforms.

Right, and I made it a point to state that the Republicans still control the state Senate. I would indeed agree that 50-50 matters if the Senate was also 50-50 or Democrat-controlled, but it isn't. Anyway, obviously I want to boot out as many Republicans as possible but I think that whether its 50-50 or 51R-49D, in practice things won't be that much different unless somehow a Republican is replaced with a Democrat in the state Senate sometime before Nov 2019.

[Virginiá]

^ Confirmed:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-election/virginia-officials-postpone-draw-to-decide-tied-statehouse-election-idUSKBN1EL005

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[Virginiá]

Came across this:

http://www.dailypress.com/news/newport-news/dp-nws-newport-news-sugg-recusal-20171221-story.html

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I guess this kind of stuff is to be expected when judges are picked by the legislature. This part did bother me, although I concede I might be missing some of the particulars:

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Why was it ok to count Yancey's ballot but not the one Simonds' team had a problem with?

Either way, the deadline was passed. For that reason alone I think the ballot should be thrown out, spoiled or not. I mean, is there any ambiguity to the law that would state the judges could count it? Why is it when it comes to election law + results/deadlines/etc, judges sometimes straight up ignore the law in favor of being "fair"? I don't keep track of every time I see this happening, but I believe it even occurred with that lawsuit to remove Farenthold from the ballot in Texas - the law stated there was a deadline, but a federal judge allowed him to be removed anyway. So what is the point of the law?

[Virginiá]

Uh Victory!

Anyone saying this is robbed doesn’t under politics. Simonds was only up 1 day while yancey has been tied or up the whole election.

Says the person who regularly complains about supposedly stolen elections.

[Virginiá]

How did you predict 2016, pal?

how did you predict Virginia and Alabama, pal?

Yep. Ken Cuccinelli vastly over performed the polls. No wonder they are sweating.

Gillespie is closing hard and should finish off Northam with ads about the Redskins.

Monmouth is an A+ pollster on 538. Great momentum for Ed.

Roy Moore is going to win.

Link

Moore 46
Jones 45

Victory is near.

Dominating.

^moore

[Virginiá]

what an effing cuck

While everyone was going bonkers over the wave that crashed into the eastern seaboard, krazen secluded himself in the special/local elections thread rooting for a Republican state Supreme Court candidate in Pennsylvania who ended up winning a statewide race by around ~4% (iirc), keeping the court's balance 5 - 2 (D).

Krazen loves to play cheerleader for Republicans and he'll be the first guy there to rub it in if they win, but he's a ghost when they lose. I think he's basically the political version of those overly-aggressive and obsessive sports fans who would rather their team cheat than be branded losers.

[Virginiá]

I mean it was a 50/50 andYancey won, Dems will take over the state in 2019 either way so who really cares.

Don't get why people are so upset / thrilled by this. The race was tied, they broke the tie by lot, the election is over. Dems gained massively and showed that they own Virginia now, and any fleeting R majorities there will be short-lived.

Also the fact that Republicans still had the state Senate anyway, so even if they won this it was still going to be divided government for 2 years.

That about sums up my thoughts on it. We're only talking about 50-50 in the chamber with the other controlled by the GOP. I'd love to boot out as many incumbent Republicans as possible right now, but Democrats are still, imo, favorites to flip the legislature in 2019, so it's just a waiting game for now.

[Virginiá]

Enjoy your last two years in control of the Virginia General Assembly, Republicans.  

It seems premature to assume 2019 will be just as much a Democrat year as 2017 or 2018.

They don't need to do better. They needed to over-perform in 2017 in part to knock off a bunch of incumbents, and now that they already cleared almost the entire GOP majority, it'll be easy to pick off a few extra seats in the HoD, especially considering that there are a number of Clinton/Northam districts to work with. The state Senate is even easier. But yes, there is no reason to think Democrats would just backslide right away. Presidents as unpopular as Trump have a tendency to keep the opposition party energized while they are in office.

Also consider that within the next couple months, we should know whether the HoD map is going to need to be redrawn to fix 11 or 12 districts, which should expand the map even more since Northam is not going to sign a fresh gerrymander for Republicans.

[Virginiá]

Wait is Simonds not appealing this? Why would she not appeal / get one more recount?

No appeal is possible under Virginia state law. Therefore, Glory and Victory goes to the GOP.

dat glory

[Virginiá]

I cant tell if Krazen is trolling or just really deluded.

I genuinely think krazen can and probably with other people is reasonable and respectful, but obviously not on Atlas. He knows he can agitate people here by doing what he does, and he also seems to have a tribal sports team mentality, so he'll never actually admit Republicans may have big problems this year (unless with like-minded people), even if he thinks it himself. He'll just gloat about the few things he can and stay silent on the rest.

In this case, he knows the VAGOP got hit hard and is probably at risk in the future, but he's not going to talk about that. He's just going to rant about glorious recounts and ties, and how Big Mitch will steal more SCOTUS seats to save the day, and so on. Typical conservative cheerleader stuff

[Virginiá]

Lawsuit likely?

There's nothing to do at this point I think. All that is worth doing is ensuring that these voters are given the correct ballots in 2019, which I imagine will be a priority for the Democratic-controlled election boards.