Don Assaid has been removed from the November ballot

This post has been edited.

Candidate Don Assaid has failed to qualify as a candidate for Member of the Board of Supervisors for the Valley District in the November 8 election. Signatures of 74 voters were invalidated because the circulator, who was also the witness to the signatures, of these petitions was not registered in Assaid’s district. Recent redistricting changes had moved the voter registration of the petition circulator from Assaid’s Valley District to the Blue Ridge District.

Section § 24.2-506 of The Virginia Election Code requires all circulators of petitions to be registered to vote, or eligible to be registered, in the same district as the candidate for whom they are collecting signatures. Similarly, all persons signing petitions must be active registered voters at the address noted on the petition and must be registered in the same district as the candidate. To ensure absolute accuracy, all petitions were checked and re-checked. In the review process it was revealed that the circulator of five petitions for Mr. Assaid was no longer registered in the Valley District, Assaid’s district. The resulting invalidation of 74 signatures left Assaid nine valid signatures short of the 125 required to be certified. The Virginia State Board of Elections was given a full report on this issue and staff concurred that the invalidation of the 74 signatures was required.

The information was run by Commonwealth’s Attorney Joel Branscom according to a conversation with him this afternoon. He had checked with State Board of Elections.

–submitted by Registrar’s Office Electoral Board

Assaid responded that he had been certified last Tuesday. “We delivered them a three page letter this morning highlighting our argument for certification and asking for a notification by 5 p.m. I am very disappointed that they chose to issue a press release rather than contact me personally. “