Electronic Voting Machines Break Done in Virginia

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; 1:20 AM

Democrat Gerald E. Connolly tonight won the hard-fought campaign for the open chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, defeating Republican opponent Mychele B. Brickner in the race to lead the region's most populous jurisdiction.

The victory in the closely watched contest buoyed Virginia Democrats, who also picked up at least two seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, both of them in Fairfax County. Despite the gains, however, Republicans remained firmly in control of the House and enlarged their majority in the state Senate as Republican Jeannemarie A. Devolites claimed victory in the race for the seat incumbent Democrat Leslie L. Byrne lost in the redistricting process.

Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) hailed his party's victories, saying, "This is a good night for Democrats, but it's a better night for Virginians who want to see a return to mainstream voices."

In Loudoun County's three-way race to head the board of supervisors, Chairman Scott K. York narrowly led Republican Robert M. Gordon with all but absentee ballots counted. York, who was running for reelection as an independent on a slow-growth platform, had 41 percent to Gordon's 40 percent, a difference of only about 250 votes. Democrat Alfred P. Van Huyck conceded defeat.

On the Loudoun board as a whole, however, advocates of slower growth appeared to be losing their majority, with Republicans leading in six of eight district races.

In Prince William County, voters handed a resounding victory to advocates of slower growth, reelecting Republican Sean T. Connaughton as chairman of the board of supervisors as well as several candidates allied with him. A pro-development supervisor, Ed S. Wilbourn III (I-Gainesville), was voted out of office along with a controversial sheriff, Democrat E. Lee Stoffregen III.

In Arlington County, nearly complete returns showed Democrats continuing their domination of the county board, with three incumbents winning reelection. Chairman Paul F. Ferguson (D) and board member J. Walter Tejada were winning handily.

"How sweet it is," Connolly told supporters after Brickner called to concede defeat and congratulate him, as early returns showed the Providence District supervisor with a commanding lead. He called the results "a victory of moderation over extremism."

The voting in Fairfax County appeared to leave the partisan composition of the board of supervisors unchanged, with Democrats retaining a 7-3 majority, Connolly said.

"We ran a great race," Brickner told her own supporters. "We did all that we could do."

Katherine K. Hanley (D), the board chairman whose seat Connolly and Brickner were seeking, said county voters "have again chosen the mainstream and not the extreme." Connolly had denounced Brickner during the campaign for her conservative views in voting to restrict certain books in Fairfax County public schools during her tenure as a school board member.

With more than 80 percent of the vote counted, Connolly led Brickner by 53 percent to 44 percent. Two independent candidates shared 3 percent of the vote.

Citing technical glitches with as many as nine new voting machines in Fairfax County, the Republican Party sought a court injunction to set aside votes recorded by those machines, which the GOP said could affect results in some races. Although the glitches were relatively few, they helped create delays in reporting results.

The recalcitrant machines, ordered from a Frisco, Tex., company as part of a federally funded effort to modernize voting mechanisms in the wake of the 2000 presidential election, were sent back to the Fairfax County registrar's office for rebooting, then returned to their respective precincts. But the county Republican Party immediately went to court to demand that results from those machines be held out as conditional votes. A hearing was set for 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The difficulties with the machines arose as Virginia voters trooped into polling places in steady streams, and sometimes waited in long lines, to cast ballots in elections that were being closely watched for trends in public sentiment on taxes and suburban growth.

On a warm Indian summer day with temperatures topping 80 degrees, voters were called upon to fill all 140 seats in the state General Assembly, all seats on the boards of supervisors in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties, and a number of local posts, such as commonwealth's attorneys, sheriffs and school board members. Bond issues were also on the ballot in some jurisdictions.

"It's been steady, with long lines in some places," said Margaret K. Luca, secretary of the Fairfax County Electoral Board. She predicted that turnout would be "approximately the same" as that in a similar election four years ago, when 36 percent of voters cast ballots. Statewide, 4.2 million Virginians were eligible to vote.

While the most significant races in the region were in Virginia, some local elections were held in Maryland. Voters in Takoma Park elected a write-in candidate, Terry Seamens, over an incumbent, Roland James Dawes, who was running unopposed for a city council seat. The jurisdiction was one of five Maryland cities that elected mayors and city council members.

In Rockville, Mayor Larry Giammo easily won reelection, defeating Russell E. Hamill Jr. All incumbents in both the Rockville and Gaithersburg city councils were returned to office.

In Northern Virginia where voters said the hot issues were taxes, transportation, development and funding for education the race to succeed Hanley as chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors drew the interest of state and federal politicians. Hanley opted not to seek reelection so she could challenge Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) for his U.S. House seat in next year's Democratic primary.

Brickner, a conservative voice on the county school board for the last eight years with strong backing from Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), had campaigned largely on a pledge to cap revenue increases from real estate taxes at 5 percent a year a position Connolly denounced as a "gimmick" that would hamstring the board and jeopardize county services.

Connolly instead vowed to push for greater authority from the General Assembly to diversify the county's tax revenue sources.

At Sleepy Hollow Elementary School, voters lined up by the hundreds, many waiting as long as an hour to use one of four available voting machines.

"Mychele Brickner scares me," said Paul Bjorkland, 50, a Connolly supporter from the area. "I'm flabbergasted at the anti-tax fervor here," he said. "They want something for nothing."

At Fort Hunt Elementary School in Mount Vernon District, Jeff Butchko, 45, said he voted for Brickner because he does not support what he called the Democrats' attitude of "let's throw money at every problem to find a solution." On taxes, he said, "I'd like the county to change direction."

The chairman's race was considered a bellwether because Gov. Warner seeks to overhaul Virginia's tax structure next year with a view toward making it more equitable and diversified. Opponents have raised alarms that the governor's overhaul would amount to raising taxes.

Although all General Assembly seats were on the ballot, many of them were uncontested. In the House, only 37 of the 100 races had more than one candidate. In the Senate, 21 of the 40 seats were contested.

Aided by more than $1 million in contributions from Warner's political action committee and an additional $700,000 that he helped raise for them, Democratic candidates hoped to pick up seats in the state House of Delegates for the first time since 1975.

Attempting to match Warner's contributions was Davis, who has used his chairmanship of a powerful national GOP fundraising committee to channel more than $5 million into Virginia state and local campaigns over the last six years.

Democrats went into the election holding 34 of the 100 seats and hoped to gain one or two, thwarting the GOP from expanding its majority from 64 to a veto-proof 67. The conservative independents who held the remaining two seats were reelected.

In the state Senate, Republicans held 23 of the 40 seats before the election, the first for all districts since a 2001 reapportionment. That redistricting eliminated one Democrat, Byrne, whose home was drawn out of the 34th district. Competing for her seat were Del. Devolites, the chief beneficiary of Davis's recent fundraising prowess, and Democrat Ronald F. "Ron" Christian.

With 64 percent of the vote counted, Devolites was leading Christian with 54 percent.

Among the top GOP targets in state legislative races were Sen. Linda T. "Toddy" Puller (D-Fairfax); Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William); Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) and Del. J. Chapman Petersen (D-Fairfax).

Colgan won his race, while Puller had 52 percent of the vote with half of precincts reporting. Petersen was well ahead with 61 percent of the vote in early returns.

Democrats scored a key victory in the 43rd House District in Fairfax County, with Mark Sickles defeating the Republican incumbent, Del. Thomas M. Bolvin. Another Democrat, Stephen C. Shannon, won the seat that Devolites gave up.

But in other races that the Democrats had targeted, L. Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William) retained his House seat, and Ken T. Cuccinelli II (R-Fairfax) was well on his way to keeping his Senate seat.

On the 10-member board of supervisors of Fairfax County, the state's largest jurisdiction with nearly 592,000 registered voters, six seats besides the chairman's were contested. Democrat Penelope A. Gross (Mason District) was winning in a hotly contested campaign over Republican H.V. "Buzz" Hawley Jr., with Independent Young Duek Ahn, who hoped to draw votes from the district's large Korean community, coming in a distant third. Catherine M. Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) withstood a challenge from Republican J.D. "Doug" Bushee.

In Arlington, four candidates were vying for two seats on the five-member county board. But many voters appeared to be preoccupied by an issue that was not on the ballot: whether the county should seek to be the site of a Major League Baseball team. The county board angered many baseballs fans in July when it voted to ask Virginia officials to remove Arlington from consideration as a future home of a relocated baseball team.

In Fairfax, voters used the new touch-screen voting machines for the first time. Resembling laptop computers without keyboards, the machines received a "wonderful response" from voters in trial runs and promised to provide quicker vote tallies than the old machines, Luca, the electoral board secretary, said before the glitches became apparent this evening.

Some voters complained that the machines did not offer the same level of privacy as curtain-cloaked voting booths. Among them was Jacquelyn Handly of Falls Church, who fretted that people waiting in line could see how she was voting.

"Without privacy, the core of our democracy is threatened," she said. "It's great that you can vote without chads, but you need to know you can vote in private."

Staff writers Steven Ginsberg, Liz Seymour, David Cho, Leef Smith,Annie Gowen, Lisa Rein, Michael Larisand Craig Timberg contributed to this report.