Perriello vs. Goode

This race is beyond going down to the wire at this point. According to the State Board of Elections site, Tom Perriello leads bigoted, corrupt incumbent Virgil Goode by 52 votes. CNN has it at Perriello +80. I don't know why there is a discrepancy. This race was not expected to be this close, and Tom was certainly not expected to be ahead. I hope it stays this way.

I don't really understand what happened with the Danville voting machines, but it seems likely to me that the vote totals we're getting from there right now are not correct, simply because Obama did not outperform Tom in the rest of the district, and Tom VASTLY outperformed Al Weed's 2006 numbers, or it wouldn't be this close - and apparently the new numbers there closely match the numbers from that race, or so I've read. Nobody really seems to know what's going on with that. I think, however, that the canvassing of votes is expected to be complete tomorrow, including the adjudication and counting of provisional ballots. Absentees are supposed to have been counted already, but I don't know what effect McCain's lawsuit regarding military absentee ballots might have on this race.

I'm being driven somewhat crazy by the lack of information available about what is going on. I'm SO far beyond thrilled that Obama won, and I'm as curious as anyone else about the cabinet appointments and staff appointments and so forth, but this is a pretty big story, in my opinion, and even the local papers and blogs don't seem to know what's going on. What's more is that OpenLeft's posts are all calling Perriello the winner, as though it's decided, when it clearly won't be certain for some time.

It'll be interesting to me to see Goode calling for a recount once it's time assuming Tom stays in the lead. He just seems like exactly the type to call those asking for recounts in any other race sore losers and so forth. I suppose there's no chance he wouldn't ask for a recount if he's down in the original count, and I also don't think there's anything wrong with calling for a recount, especially if there is any reason to believe there have been any sort of irregularities. I assume, however, that the BOE is being incredibly careful in this race, since it's coming down to such an incredibly, unbelievably small margin.