Outlook of Obenshain Trying to Steal Election Increases

Yesterday I noted that failed GOP candidate appears to be trying to fabricate reasons to not tally votes from some precincts in Fairfax County.  Now, the Richmond Times Dispatch is reporting that Obenshain seems to be raising the issue of throwing the election into the Virginia General Assembly where he hopes the GOP majority will override the vote of Virginians and award the election to Obenshain.  Obviously, it is an ominous development and underscores just how anti-democracy the Virginia GOP has become.  Today's Virginia GOP represents angry white religious extremists and those mostly motivated by greed.  Here are highlights from The Times Dispatch story:

The lawyer representing Republican Mark D. Obenshain in the pending statewide recount in the attorney general race on Monday for the first time openly raised the issue of contesting the election in the General Assembly if the tally does not sway the result in the Republican’s favor.

During a hearing in Richmond, William H. Hurd, head of Obenshain’s legal team, told the three judges who will oversee the recount that it is “critically important” for his team to get full access to data from electronic poll books because Dec. 23 marks the deadline to formally challenge the election results in the legislature.

The court previously set Dec. 17-18 for the statewide recount, giving Fairfax County a one-day head start. The three-judge panel will review any challenged ballots Dec. 19, leaving a candidate only three days to announce a contest — a rarely used provision in state law.

If he loses the recount, Obenshain could ask a joint session of the General Assembly — which is dominated by Republicans — to reverse the results. Under state law, grounds for a contest include objections to “the conduct or results of the election accompanied by specific allegations which, if proven true, would have a probable impact on the outcome of the election.”

In an interview after the hearing, Hurd did not say whether Obenshain would pursue this option, adding that such speculation is based on “the unsubstantiated assumption” that the Republican would lose the recount.

But Hurd’s request to obtain electronic copies of poll books appears to indicate that a contest is not off the table. Poll books play no role in a recount but could become an important tool in identifying electoral irregularities, which would be the basis for a contest.

The court granted Hurd’s request to gain full access to the poll books, but rejected his motion to set aside the Fairfax ballots, first allowing local officials and Herring’s legal team to comment.
 
Herring’s attorney Kevin J. Hamilton called Hurd’s motion “nothing but an effort to distract.”

“The idea to set aside thousands of ballots and not count them is ridiculous,” Hamilton said in an interview. “I’m not worried about that. We’ll have an orderly recount and in the end, Mark Herring will be the next attorney general.”

In my personal opinion, Obenshain is down right scary and I could picture him among the ranks of Hitler's SS.