‘dc election day’
courtesy of ‘Paige Weaver’

As of 1:25am, it appears that Vince Gray has won handily over Adrian Fenty for Mayor, Kwame Brown has defeated Vincent Orange for Council Chair, and Phil Mendelson has held onto his seat against challenger Michael Brown. However, because of the introduction of early voting and same-day registration this year, even with 128/143 precincts counted, there are still literally tens of thousands of votes that have yet to be counted. Early votes aren’t counted until after election day votes have all been counted, so that process hasn’t started yet, and there are theories that a lot of Fenty’s votes are hiding in with the early ones (1:40am: DCist’s Martin Austermuhle reports from BOEE HQ reports that even with early votes, Gray leads Fenty 59,000 votes to 50,000). Same-day registrations are given provisional ballots, where the voter’s address has to be verified by postal mail within 10 days. So there is still wiggle room in these numbers. Meanwhile, because all the counting procedures are new this year, it’s taking much longer than usual to get the numbers done.

BOEE has had trouble importing data to post to the DCBOEE results page, so they’re posting essentially a printout from their system to get the information out.

So! It’s Primary Election Day, also known as “the day DC actually elects its government.” You’ve read up on the races, you’ve voted (you HAVE voted, right?), and now it’s time to watch the results roll in. We’ll be updating this post as the precincts report.

And that should start around 8:30, since the Gray campaign’s petition to keep the polls open until 10pm was denied. The campaign had complained about a number of irregularities, including precincts opening hours late, and voters being turned away. DC Board of Elections and Ethics confirms that a couple of precincts did open late, but were handing out paper ballots within 30 minutes. They also say that the wait times experienced today generally do not lead to extending poll hours.

UPDATE 9:15pm: DCBoEE’s results page is live. There’s nothing on it yet.

UPDATE 10:45pm: A few precincts’ results have been posted to DCBOEE’s results page. The handful of results show Eleanor Holmes Norton winning for Delegate, Fenty winning for mayor, and Mendelson winning for At-Large, but it is far, far too early to draw any conclusions.

UPDATE 11:05pm: With 7,000 votes counted, Gray is up 59% to Fenty’s 38%.

UPDATE 11:25pm: With 12,226 votes counted, Gray is up to 70%, Fenty at 30%. Yeah. I know. Kwame Brown is at 54% to Vincent Orange’s 40% for Council Chair. In the At-Large race, Mendelson has 60% to Michael D. Brown’s 32%. Ward 1 has Jim Graham at 42%, with Jeff Smith at 29% and Bryan Weaver at 27%. In Ward 3, where Mary Cheh ran unopposed, she has 95% of the vote. In Ward 5, Harry Thomas is at 64%, with Delano Hunter at 17% and Kenyan McDuffie at 14%.

UPDATE 11:40pm: Only one precinct has reported in Ward 3, and still none at all in Ward 6, so the citywide numbers are still subject to radical change.

UPDATE 11:43pm: HELLO THERE, Fenty voters! It appears a few Ward3/6 precincts have been counted. Gray’s still ahead, but it’s closer now: 56% Gray, 42% Fenty.

UPDATE 1:10am: With 128/143 precincts reporting, it appears that Vince Gray has won with 48,924 votes to Fenty’s 40,746, according to Mike Debonis, who is actually standing in the counting room at BOEE.