A northern Virginia county is acknowledging that it underreported President Joe Biden’s margin of victory there over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by about 4,000 votes. It was the first detailed accounting of the errors that initially became public as part of a criminal case. Thursday’s admission from the Prince William County Office of Elections comes a week after prosecutors dropped charges against the county’s former registrar. Counts were also off by lesser margins in a Senate and congressional race. In a statement, the county’s current director of elections emphasized that the mistakes did not come close to affecting the outcome of any race.

A Northern Virginia county acknowledged it underreported President Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Donald Trump there in the 2020 presidential election by about 4,000 votes, the first detailed accounting of errors that came to light in 2022 as part of a criminal case.

The admission Thursday from the Prince William County Office of Elections comes a week after prosecutors from the Virginia Attorney General’s office dropped charges against the county’s former registrar, Michele White.

Counts were also off in races for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, though by lesser margins.

In a statement, the county’s current registrar, Eric Olsen, emphasized that the mistakes did not come close to affecting the outcome of any race and “did not consistently favor one party or candidate but were likely due to a lack of proper planning, a difficult election environment, and human error.”

  • Cosmic Cleric
    56•6 months ago

    Can someone tell me please why we allow each State to set up its own set of rules/procedures for how federally elected positions are voted on and counted?

    Edit: thank you all for the education. I had actually meant my comment more rhetorically than literally (I’m aware of how the Constitution works, etc.), to spur discussion about changing it, but glad that there was some good educational information in the the replies.

    • @chiliedogg
      45•6 months ago

      Getting the Constitution passed was a monumental challenge. The US under the Articles of Confederation wasn’t really a country as we’d see it today. It was more like the European Union than a unified nation.

      Adopting the Constitution required 13 independent nations to give up their sovereignty to a federal government. Part of the negotiations was letting states keep certain powers - among them how they would select the President. That’s the biggest there’s an electoral college - each state is given votes according to their population, but the states themselves select the voters.

      The Constitution doesn’t even require that there be a popular election for the President. All 50 states currently choose their electors through a popular vote, but that’s absolutely not a federal requirement.

      One of the scariest things the GOP is trying to do is getting the state legislatures in GOP-controlled states to pass emergency laws if Trump loses in their state to change how their electors are assigned after the election - and in Bush v Gore the Court hinted that that might be perfectly legal.

    • @DreamlandLividity
      31•6 months ago

      Because the founding fathers had to make a lot of concessions to the already existing states that were not thrilled to give up their power and rights?

      States literally don’t even have to have elections. If they pass a law that the their electoral votes will be given to a winner of a raffle or a quiz show, they can do that according to the US constitution.

      • @APassenger
        17•6 months ago

        #Article 2, Section 1:

        "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

        Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."

        Now, it could be easy to read that one way, but the Independent State Legislature theory was rejected by the SCOTUS as recently as 2023.

      • BeautifulMind ♾️English
        3•6 months ago

        Article IV, section 4 : “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” [~https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S4-1/ALDE_00013635]

        The ‘guarantee clause’ was both a promise that the federal government would help suppress state-level insurrections and protect member states from foreign attack, and a requirement that in order to be a member state, you had to have a government in the form of a republic (i.e., no monarchy-states, no dictatorships). This can be read to mean that democracy of some sort is required, as republics implicitly derive their public authority from the people living in them.

        • TWeaKEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          That’s interesting to me. Does the requirement for a republic prevent the possibility of a true direct democracy?

          • BeautifulMind ♾️English
            3•6 months ago

            It could, depending on how the court is feeling about it that day, and on whether or not congress writes legislation to provide specifics to just what Article IV, sec4 means. (This seems to have been one of those clauses the framers left as a to-do for future legislators to fill out)