The November election results for a legislative seat in Newport News, Virginia continue to be disputed as the Democratic Party challenger explained Wednesday on MSNBC’s Hardball.

“Political control of the Virginia House of Delegates is up in the air, this after a tie-breaking draw was postponed,” guest anchor Steve Kornacki noted. “A random draw was supposed to settle the race between Democratic candidate Shelly Simonds and Republican incumbent David Yancey.”

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“Now the stakes here are high. A victory for Simonds would shift Republican’s control to an even 50-50 split, that would force a power sharing agreement between the parties,” Kornacki explained.

The race comes down to a single ballot.

“I think that ballot should not be counted at all because there’s no consistent pattern there,” Simonds argued. “There’s an x and a bubble, just a bubble, the slash — some people say that’s a check mark — so I think it’s really a classic example of an over-vote, which should not be counted.”

The disputed ballot was not tallied in the recount, but was added back in after Delegate Yancy took the matter to court.

“We feel the integrity of the entire recount system is at stake, because what we’re going to end up with is this downward spiral of challenging every single ballot up to judges,” Simonds argued. “I think the citizens should be the one deciding on these ballots, not just giving everything over to the judges to decide.”

“You know, I would have been fine with the random drawing, if it really had been a tie,” Simonds explained. “But I won the recount fair and square. I played by the rules.”

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“The rules in Virginia are very clear, but my opponent made an end run around those rules,” Simonds charged. “If we have to go to random drawing, I think it will be a very sad end to our story in Virginia.”

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