Fairfax County elections officials are rejecting about 200 overseas ballots, many of them from members of the military, saying the voters failed to observe a minor technicality in filling out their absentee forms.
The decision to invalidate the ballots has angered local and federal Republican officials, who say the county is disenfranchising a group most deserving of the right to vote. The county’s registrar argues he has no choice but to obey a law he recognizes as flawed.
“I’m not the guy disenfranchising people,” said Fairfax County Registrar Rokey Suleman. “The commonwealth of Virginia is disenfranchising people.”
Under the 2002 law, overseas voters sending in their absentee applications and ballots simultaneously must have a witness sign the form. That witness is required to provide an address.
But the federal government changed the form three years later to cut out the space for the address, officials said. Many voters who got a witness to sign their ballot left off the address, for which there was no clear space. That rendered their forms officially invalid, under a strict reading of the law. The State Board of Elections last week instructed county officials to adhere to the letter of the law.
But several Virginia localities, including Alexandria and the military-heavy Hampton Roads region, said Thursday they will ignore the glitch and count the overseas ballots.
The problem is especially sensitive because the turnout of armed forces voters in Virginia could help determine whether Sen. John McCain can win a swing state that’s critical to his presidential campaign.
Suleman brought the problem last month before the Fairfax County Electoral Board, which “saw no other recourse” and told him to work with the State Board of Elections to seek a change in the law, according to the Sept. 16 meeting’s minutes.
Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, a Republican, announced the ballot problems at a news conference Thursday.
“We need to be sure that we can count the ballots of the men and women overseas defending our right to vote,” he said.
Suleman took heat earlier this month for sending his staff, at the request of defense attorneys, to the county jail to sign up nonfelon inmates to vote, which was first reported in The Examiner. It was the first such visit to the jail in at least 30 years.
“Our fighting soldiers ought to get at least the consideration that the prisoners in the jail get,” said District 11 Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican, who said the disparate treatment of overseas voters violates federal law.
Suleman was active in Ohio Democratic politics at his previous job with the Trumbull County Board of Elections, and ran for office earlier this year before taking the job at Fairfax. The office he holds in Virginia is officially nonpartisan.
The ballots in Fairfax won’t officially be rejected until the election. Suleman said he’s checking records to see if some of the about 200 voters had sent in absentee applications separately, which would allow their votes to be counted.
