by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Dwayne Yancey, editor of the Cardinal News, also has a newsletter, West of the Capital. In his latest edition of the newsletter he reports that there were a significant number of precincts in Southwest Virginia in which no one voted in the Democratic primary. No early votes; no voters showing up on Election Day. In others, there were just a handful of voters. According to results posted by the Virginia Dept. of Elections, in Scott County, for example, there were only 122 votes cast for Lieutenant Governor in the entire county. The Gate City precinct had the most voters–28. That must have been a really long day for the officers of election in those precincts!

If he were running the campaigns of either party (which he assures readers he is not doing) Yancey says his advice would be–visit some of those areas. For the Democratic candidates, such a visit would be to encourage the few remaining Democratic voters in the area to turn out in November so as to cut into the Republicans’ margins in the Southwest. For the Republican candidates, such a visit could serve to thank Southwest Virginia voters for their support and encourage them to turn out in November to help offset Democrats’ advantage in urban areas.

He renewed his standing offer: “My previous offer still stands: If any statewide candidate visits Lee County and sends a photo, I’ll run it here. Last week, we had a photo of Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who had a law enforcement roundtable in Pennington Gap in Lee County.”