Virginia county admits election tally in 2020 shorted Joe Biden
MANASSAS, Va. — A northern Virginia county acknowledges that 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 account of errors revealed 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 former county clerk Michele White.
The numbers also lagged behind in the battle for the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, albeit by smaller margins.
In a statement, the county’s current clerk, Eric Olsen, emphasized that the errors 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 to good planning, a difficult election environment and human error.”
In the presidential race, the county wrongly missed Biden by 1,648 votes and overreported Trump’s count by 2,327 votes. The 3,975-vote error in the margin of victory was immaterial in a contest that Biden won by 450,000 votes in Virginia and by more than 60,000 votes in Prince William County.
In the battle for the US Senate, Democrat Mark Warner fell 1,589 votes short and Republican Daniel Gade fell 107 votes short. Warner won statewide by more than 500,000 votes.
And in a U.S. House race, Republican Robert Wittman fell short by 293 votes. He won by more than 80,000.
The details released Thursday were the first extensive response about the errors since White was initially charged in 2022 with corrupt conduct, making a false statement and dereliction of duty. Prosecutors from Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office dropped the charges against White with little explanation, and court records lacked details of the alleged misconduct.
Only on Thursday did it even become known which candidates benefited from the mistakes. Olsen said Thursday that he was no longer allowed to be candid about the mistakes while the criminal case was ongoing.
In a telephone interview, Olsen said most of the errors occurred in so-called “split districts,” where one district is home to two different congressional districts. The county’s voting system did not divide presidential elections by congressional district. The state system required them to be split in that way. The errors occurred when trying to reconcile county data with state requirements, he said.
Other errors revealed flaws in the province’s validation process. For example, Olsen said he first discovered the errors when he noticed that precincts 607 and 608 showed identical presidential votes. Someone had accidentally entered the details from one police station into another.
“It seemed like an obvious typo,” said Olsen, who replaced White as clerk and eventually reported the irregularities to state officials under his predecessor.
The case against White is the only criminal prosecution brought so far by a special Election Integrity Unit that Miyares created in 2022. Miyares’ office said the unit was created in part to fulfill a campaign promise “because Virginians raised concerns with him about our elections as he traveled throughout the Commonwealth.” Critics, including the NAACP, said the unit was created to appease election deniers.
White’s attorney, Zachary Stafford, said allegations that White was responsible for the inaccurate figures were refuted by statements from a government witness before the trial, and that prosecutors wisely dropped the charges. He said the county election board is the one that certified the election results, and White became a scapegoat.
“The board identified incorrect results and they and the attorney general’s office attempted to blame Ms. White for their mistakes,” Stafford said in a written statement.
Virginia’s most recent redistricting has dramatically reduced the number of split districts that caused problems in Prince William County in 2020.
Olsen, the election official, said new procedures and systems have been put in place to prevent mistakes.
“Mistakes are unfortunate, but require dedication and innovation to correct. They do not reflect a deliberate attempt to undermine the integrity of the election process and the investigation into this matter concluded with that conclusion,” Olsen said in a statement.