By Steve Haner

Four votes. After weeks of dire warnings, paranoia and conspiracy chatter, a formal recount of the Bob Good-John McGuire congressional primary yesterday moved a total of four votes out of almost 63,000. McGuire was confirmed as the nominee for November by a narrow but solid margin of more than three hundred votes.

Soon to be former Congressman Good presumably will get a fat bill for the personnel, travel, legal and administrative costs of assembling and reviewing all the ballots in a room full of observers. Pay no attention if he squawks, because nobody actually familiar with Virginia’s elections saw this recount as anything but a waste of time. Virginia’s election process, with its reliance on paper ballots backing up the machine counts, is solid.

It is time for those in the Republican Party who continue to insist Virginia’s elections are insecure to just shut up. It was a bit of irony that as the media were reporting the smooth recount that confirmed the outcome, the Richmond Times-Dispatch was posting another guest column from one of the complainers. The “risk-limiting audit” process he advocates would be unnecessary. If there is a tight outcome with a reason to be concerned, the recount law remains in place.

Worse, such a mandate would continue to allow Virginia Republicans to delude themselves about why they lose elections. It cannot be that too many voters are rejecting their candidates or policies! Or they are not running good campaigns! With the major shift in momentum in the presidential race since President Joe Biden withdrew, the chance the GOP will be scrambling for excuses in Virginia is once again very high.

Concerned about election integrity? Governor Glenn Youngkin gave his fellow Republicans, all Virginians really, the best advice the other day. Become an election officer, take the training, sit through a few elections from the inside, and relax. If both parties have solid, honest folks in every precinct for every election, the outcome will be reliable. If observers are there for the review of provisional ballots, again, the outcome will be reliable.

The debate over how many early voting days we need is valid. Forty-five days is ridiculous and expensive. A future legislature might restore more identification requirements or reverse same-day registration. That is also a debatable point. But the votes once cast get accurately counted, with a recount left to squabbling over the rare questionable ballot.