Voters participating in the Charlottesville Democratic Party’s firehouse primary have selected Satyendra Huja, Kathleen Galvin and Dede Smith as their nominees to run for the City Council race on November 8.
Huja and Galvin were nominated on the first round of counting in the party’s selection process, which used an instant run-off procedure to ensure that the winning nominees each received a majority of votes.
“There was a very close race for the third position, and it required actually going to the fifth ballot to resolve it,” said James Nix, the co-chair of the Charlottesville Democratic Party.
Smith was nominated with a 31-vote margin over Paul Beyer.
Colette Blount, Brevy Cannon and James Halfaday were also eliminated during the counting.
Beyer told reporters that he would ask for a recount of the votes, the results of which were announced at 1:30 am on Sunday morning after more than five hours of counting.
“It’s a 30 vote difference and we need to check things and make sure they are correct,” Beyer said.
“There is always the possibility that the candidate who came almost in third place may want to examine the ballots, but I hope not,” Nix said. “I think we did a very careful job in counting the ballots and I certainly don’t anticipate that any further examination would show any change in the totals.”
Nix said the full vote counts would be released sometime on Sunday.
The three Democrats will face independents Scott Bandy, Brandon Collins, Bob Fenwick, Paul Long and Andrew Williams in the November election.
In all, 2,524 Charlottesville residents voted in the primary, including 284 absentee ballots.
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