Town of Jarratt - Post Election STILL Unofficial

The title should tell you all you need to know.

If it doesn't, here are the overall results - as well as the fact that said results are still marked as "unofficial" - with links to the exact information as given below.

For the 2025 Mayor of the Town of Jarratt and members of Council:

Mayor Elect:

Brandon Michael Rawlings (202 votes, of 323 total)

Council Elect:

• Anne F. Brown (189 votes - incumbent) 
• Gregory Adam Byers (180 votes - incumbent)
• Ronnie M. Pearce Sr. (178 votes)
• Dana Y. Kinsley (164 votes - incumbent)
• Ruth S. O'Berry (160 votes - incumbent)
  
  TIE:
• Y. Omar Smith (150 votes - incumbent)
• Keith W. Ridout (150 votes)

Because of this tie, everything is still unofficial - until the tie is settled, we will remain with the count as above and continue waiting to see who will be the sixth member of council.

Please remember that "unofficial" is for the Commonwealth of Virginia as a whole, as there was a presidential election alongside everything else.  At last count, there were 4,319,317 votes cast for president - and any mail-in ballot may be allotted time to arrive and be counted in the totals as stated in [§ 24.2-709.1] by the Friday after Election Day.

Also, specifically, opening and counting the votes on mail-in/absentee ballots "[...] shall be at the general registrar's discretion at any time prior to the seventh day immediately preceding the election but shall be mandatory beginning on the seventh day immediately preceding the election." [Subsection B of § 24.2-709.1]

Laymen's terms, for this election year the mandatory date wherein all said ballots were to start being opened, inspected, and counted in Virginia was actually on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 (should my understanding of the words "immediately preceding" equate to "the day before").  If a registrar so wished, they could have started sooner.

While this is noted here, it is also noted that any mail-in ballot found with slight errors must also be granted a three-day window of opportunity to correct said errors. [Subsection C of § 24.2-709.1]

If this still applies to any ballots arriving through mail on Friday, then you still have three more days added into the middle of next week - and it takes quite some time to get that many mail-in ballots (447,456 throughout Virginia at last count) unsealed, inspected, have calls made if any minor mistakes are found, and counted REGARDLESS of how many people are working on them.

You never knew how difficult elections were behind-the-scenes, did you? (Neither did we.)

- Jarratt, VA, USA:

For the People.