Politics & Government
Alexandria Residents Waste No Time at the Polls Tuesday
Tuesday, Fairfax County residents voted for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, sheriff and their local delegates. Del. Scott Surovell and Del. Rob Krupicka were voted back into the 44th and 45th district seats.
After a long and interesting campaign year, Election Day came and went and Virginian voters narrowly elected Terry McAuliffe for the next governor.
Virginia, once reliably conservative-red, has become increasingly purple over the years, and voters lurched deeper toward the blue Tuesday, apparently showing their displeasure with the direction the GOP has taken in the state and nationally.
With 99 percent of the vote in, McAuliffe had 47.5 percent of the vote, Cuccinelli 45.9. Libertarian Robert Sarvis had 6.6. In the raw vote, McAuliffe had 1,027,453; Cuccinelli 991,562; and Sarvis 142,818.
Find out what's happening in Greater Alexandriawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Cuccinelli and his running mate for the lieutenant governor’s office, the Rev. E.W. Jackson, are hard-core anti-abortion foes, and each has opposed gay rights in the state with razor-sharp rhetoric from their offices, the pulpit and on the stump.
Jackson was handily defeated by Sen. Ralph S. Northam, a state senator, physician and Democrat. Republican Mark Obenshain held a slim, 12,546-vote lead over Democrat Mark Herring, according to unofficial results from the State Board of Election. Twenty precincts had yet to report.
Find out what's happening in Greater Alexandriawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
By the end of the night, residents in the 44th and 45th district had also re-elected Del. Scott Surovell and Del. Rob Krupicka.
While some polling places in Virginia may have long lines, the Alexandria area wasn't too extreme At Belle View Elementary School, voters came and went pretty quickly during the morning, said Debbie Fairbanks, assistant chief elections officer. At around 10:30 a.m. about 430 residents had voted at the precinct.
"We've been steady since 6 a.m., and people are doing mostly paper ballots. We'll probably see a lot of senior citizens come out at about 1 p.m.," said Fairbanks, who has been working the precinct with Chief Elections Officer Stephen Toth since 2000.
"It's not like last November, when people had to read long referendums. This year, people actually know who they're voting for and they don't have to read a long referendum and are in and out," she said.
As of Nov. 1, 2,508 Fairfax County residents were registered to vote in the Belle View District, according to the Virginia State Board of Elections.
Not too far away at West Potomac High School, Chief Elections Officer Dorothy Bell said they saw about the same amount of traffic as Belle View.
"People have been voting consistently since we opened, about a person a minute," Bell said later in the morning on Tuesday. "We we're slow with identifying someone but we eventually found them and got it squared away."
Around 10:40 a.m., Bell said they had already seen more than 300 paper ballots and 401 people had voted since they opened.
Fairfax County residents also voted on a school bond referendum which passed Tuesday night. For an in-depth look, visit this Fairfax County Public Schools page that gives all the details.
Read more:
- Results for Fairfax County Sheriff Race 2013: Voters Head to the Polls
- 45th District: Krupicka, Engle on Education, Transportation
- Virginia Elections 2013: Live Updates From the Polls, Campaigns and Voters
- Results for Virginia Election 2013 Governor's Race: Steady Turnout, A Few Glitches
- Hollin Hall Resident Votes in U.S. for the First Time
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