Peter Alexander seeks to withdraw election lawsuit, admits absentee ballots were counted

In this initial suit, Alexander alleged that 125 absentee ballots weren’t counted in the race. Now, the nonsuit reads “Based on such investigation, it has become apparent that all 125 absentee ballots at issue were, in fact, counted (with one possible exception).” Faraldi’s attorney, Zachary Werrell, said that the 125 absentee ballots had a status of ‘marked,’ which Alexander believed meant they were uncounted.

Any ballots that are not counted before election day, but are counted on or after election day, remain listed as ‘marked,” Werrell said. “Mr. Alexander’s campaign saw that 125 ballots were listed as marked in the absentee ballot list after election day and they believed incorrectly that they hadn’t been counted or processed. That’s something that’s kind of easily dissuadable after looking at the definitions and taking a few minutes to look at it.”

Werrell told ABC13 that he thinks this suit is just a symptom of the communication issues on Lynchburg City Council. “To me, it seems pretty obvious that they were upset about the results of the election, and perhaps rightly so,losing an election is never fun. It hurts and it stinks. I think that they had an idea that there was something amiss, and based off of their absentee ballot method that they were using to track these, I can see how they first might’ve come to the assumption that they hadn’t been counted, but if you look at the definitions of the words used in that column, there isn’t an entry for counted after or on election day.” Werrell said the lawsuit was a major waste of time for both parties. He thinks both Faraldi and the city deserve an apology.

I believe that this lawsuit was a giant waste of time because it took about ten or fifteen minutes looking at the official results to be able to figure out exactly what had gone on,” Werrell said. “There’s no reason to believe that the results were invalid and they by filing this lawsuit, which again could have been figured out very quickly without the need of going through litigation, it put doubt in the voters minds about this election.”