- Prince William County, Virginia, admitted it underreported President Joe Biden's 2020 victory over his predecessor Donald Trump.
- Officials are believed to have underreported Biden's vote total by 1,648 votes and overreported Trump's total by 2,327 votes.
- The county primarily includes the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and is a Democratic stronghold.
A northern Virginia county has admitted to underreporting President Joe Biden's margin of victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by about 4,000 votes, and will be revealed in 2022 as part of a criminal case. This is the first time that a detailed explanation of the error has been provided.
Thursday's admission by the Prince William County Elections Office comes a week after prosecutors with the Virginia Attorney General's Office dropped charges against Michelle White, the county's former registrar.
The U.S. Senate and House races also missed the tally, albeit by close margins.
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Eric Olsen, the current county registrar, said in a statement that the error was not significant enough to affect the outcome of the race. This is likely due to a lack of proper planning.” Election environment and human error. ”
In the presidential election, the county incorrectly underreported Mr. Biden by 1,648 votes and overreported Mr. Trump's vote count by 2,327 votes. The 3,975-vote margin of victory was insignificant in a race in which Biden won Virginia by 450,000 votes and Prince William County by more than 60,000 votes.
In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Mark Warner fell 1,589 votes short, while Republican Daniel Gade fell 107 votes short. Warner won statewide by more than 500,000 votes.
And in the U.S. House of Representatives, he fell 293 votes short of Republican Robert Whitman. He won by a margin of over 80,000.
The details released Thursday were the first major response to the error since White was first indicted in 2022 on corruption charges of false statements and dereliction of duty. Prosecutors in Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares' office dropped the charges against White with little explanation, and court records lacked details of the alleged wrongdoing.
Prince William County, Virginia, has admitted to counting errors in several 2020 elections.
It wasn't until Thursday that it was even made public which candidates had profited from the mistake. Olsen said Thursday that he was restricted from speaking more openly about the error while the criminal case was pending.
Olsen said in a phone interview that most of the errors occurred in so-called “split districts,” where one district has two different House districts. The county's voting system did not divide presidential votes by congressional district. The state system required them to be divided like that. He said an error occurred in adapting the county's data to state requirements.
Other mistakes highlighted flaws in the county's verification process. For example, Olsen said he only realized the mistake when he noticed that the 607th and 608th precincts displayed identical presidential votes. Someone incorrectly entered data from one branch into the other branch.
“It seemed like an obvious typo,” said Olsen, who replaced White as registrar and ultimately reported misconduct under his predecessor to state authorities.
The case against White is the only criminal complaint filed so far by the Election Integrity Task Force, which Miyares formed in 2022. Mr. Miyares' office said the unit was created as part of fulfilling a campaign promise “because Virginians expressed concerns to Mr. White about our elections.” He traveled throughout the Commonwealth. ” Critics, including the NAACP, claim the unit was formed to pander to election deniers.
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White's attorney, Zachary Stafford, said claims that White was responsible for the false numbers were disproved by pretrial statements from government witnesses, and prosecutors wisely dropped the charges. He said the county's Board of Elections had certified the election results and that White had been made the scapegoat.
“The commission found an incorrect result, and the commission and the Attorney General's Office sought to hold Mr. White accountable for that mistake,” Stafford said in a written statement.
Virginia's recent redistricting has dramatically reduced the number of divided school districts that caused problems for Prince William County in 2020.
Olsen, the election official, said new procedures and systems are in place to prevent mistakes.
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“While the mistake is unfortunate, it will take diligence and innovation to correct it,” Olsen said in a statement. It ended with that.”
