Fairfax County elections officials plan to drop the long-standing tradition of letting Vienna select its own poll workers, e-mails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show, a move that follows controversy over the small town’s elections.
After news broke on alleged voter interference during the May 1 Town Council election, the e-mails show a private discussion between officials over how to keep news stories from appearing in the media and how to “quietly” step up oversight of the town’s electoral process. The county oversees Vienna’s annual election.
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“For reasons lost in the mists of time, we had a practice of deferring to the Vienna folks, whom we thought were sending us a slate of even-handed election officials,” Fairfax County Board of Elections Chairman Robert Sparks wrote on May 10. “Turns out some of them were ill-informed about the rules, to put it nicely, and acted on that misinformation. The way we should work, I suggest, is to go to the Vienna folks quietly in the near future and let them know that the old days are over. We are going to be more actively involved in vetting those who serve as elections officers in future elections.”
The county Board of Elections on Tuesday verified the authenticity of the e-mails, which are posted at www.historicvienna.com, a local blog.
The contention is summed up in a complaint filed at the State Board of Election. It alleges a poll worker told a voter at the booth to “vote for three,” a reference to the maximum number of candidates a person could cast a vote for.With only two challengers, filling the out three entries would have sent a vote to an incumbent, each of whom won by wide margins.
The poll worker was removed that day, though the state later faulted the county for not taking action fast enough. The worker has since denied any wrongdoing.
“What came through [in news coverage] was that … Vienna Town politics looks pretty shabby in print,” Sparks wrote on May 7.
In an e-mail the following day, Sparks urged Fairfax County Board of Elections Secretary Maggi Luca, who had become the defacto spokeswoman, not to let a reporter “get you to say anything directly critical of Vienna.”
“Anything critical (or seemingly critical) means he goes to them for comment, and the ping-pong game is on with the press writing a new story every day,” he wrote.
