Blacksburg Town Council results up in the air due to write-in candidates
Lori Graham
Contributing Writer
MONTGOMERY COUNTY-A warm Tuesday, Nov. 7 greeted voters who came out to cast their ballots in Montgomery County.
Blacksburg Town Council and Christiansburg Town Council each have three seats open in the election.
Incumbent Jerry Ford running for re-election to Blacksburg Town Council started his day at Margaret Beeks Elementary School’s polling location but was later found at the Luther Memorial Lutheran Church on Prices Fork Road.
Richard Mitchell, a campaign volunteer for Rick Johnson, stood alongside Ford as they greeted voters a distance from the polling location entrance.
“I was at Margaret Beeks first thing this morning and it was fairly slow,” Mitchell said.
“I was at G-3, the G-District up at North Main, and they [volunteers] were floating between all three precincts, and they said our G-3 was probably the busiest. It was steady,” Ford said.
Unofficial election results were made available by the State Board of Elections for Virginia and are updated as numbers come in. In the Blacksburg Town Council race, there were three available seats and two candidates on the ballot. Incumbent Jerry Ford, Jr. garnered 29.76% or 3,802 votes, incumbent Michael D. Sutphin gained 34.69% or 4,432 votes, and the write-in had 35.56% or 4,543 votes. Both Johnson and Liam Watson were running write-in campaigns.
Three seats were open for Christiansburg Town Council. The candidates on the ballot, with the number of votes received at the time of this publication, the top three vote-getters are incumbent Johana Hicks (3,202), Kim Bowman (3,188), and incumbent Samuel Bishop III (2,820). Other candidates and their vote totals are: Steve Huppert (2,327), Jeff Akers (2,724), Mike Scarry (1,706), and Wendy Glass (2,797), with write-in votes totaling 130 votes.
Numerous volunteers assist in helping voters to navigate smoothly in and out of polling locations throughout the day in each district.
Numbers are unofficial as provisional and post-election votes have yet to be reported at the time of this publication.
