Several Virginia counties have refined their election processes in preparation for the governor’s race, hoping to ease the concerns of politicos already speculating an improper election.
With neck-and-neck polling coming out of the Virginia governor’s race, local officials have made efforts to change their methodology for counting votes and combat speculation of voter fraud. New strategies for election accountability include strict rules to divide votes by type, limit what information is shared before polls close, and begin the counting process earlier.
“If these changes are done, it should make reporting the results clearer,” Brenda Cabrera, president of the Voter Registrars Association of Virginia, told the Washington Examiner.
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The Virginia Legislature passed H.B. 1888 in May, requiring counties to report early in-person voting and mail-in ballots separately. Cabrera also noted a provision that allows precincts to report how many votes they received but not who received them. The law also requires counties to begin pre-processing mail ballots no later than a week before the election.
These changes in election law come after Republicans began expressing concerns about voter fraud in the governor’s race.
“The Virginia governor’s election — you better watch it,” former President Donald Trump told Virginia talk show host John Fredericks in September. “You have a close race in Virginia, but it’s not close if they cheat.”
Virginia was the subject of intense scrutiny in 2020 when the Associated Press called the state for President Joe Biden only a half-hour after polls had closed with 10% of the vote counted. At that point, Trump led the early raw vote count, causing some to argue the state election was stolen.
“Trump jumped out to an early lead in Virginia because many Republican counties reported their results first,” the Associated Press wrote in its explanation for the call. “But much of the remaining ballots left to be counted were cast in population-dense Democratic areas near Washington D.C., including Fairfax and Prince William counties.”
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In response, many Republican voters have offered to volunteer as poll watchers during the early voting process in the state, according to the Washington Post.
Others have filed lawsuits claiming violations of state election law. In Fairfax County, the conservative-aligned Public Interest Legal Foundation and Virginia Institute for Public Policy filed a lawsuit in County Circuit Court claiming Fairfax County accepted more than 300 ballots without proper identification.
Fairfax County General Registrar Scott Konopasek contests the claim, stating, “The Office of Elections is processing absentee ballot requests in accordance with the laws of Virginia” and that voters had no reason to doubt the county registrar’s integrity.
Scott Konopasek did not immediately return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
