Politicians will play politics. And there’s nothing wrong with that, in general.
The problem arises when the malign notion takes hold that an overwhelmingly clean and fair election administration process is fair game for a partisan disinformation campaign to subvert public faith in the process and impose a corrupt system under the control of a party
The MAGA wing of today’s Republican Party knows that its deepening right-wing nationalism, its penchant for outlandish and baseless conspiracies, and the extremist candidates it attracts will alienate mainstream America and make it harder to win fair elections in an increasingly diverse nation without his heavy thumb on the scales.
The latest to comfort this undemocratic end is Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is creating a 20-person “election integrity unit” in his office. This is especially puzzling because Miyares is not among the Republicans who falsely claim that President Joe Biden usurped Donald Trump’s presidency through fraud. At least that’s what bureau spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita recently assured the Mercury’s Graham Moomaw.
But Miyares can’t resist playing politics and pandering to GOP Trump hardliners who he could ask to nominate him as governor of Virginia in less than three years.
I have covered elections and the machinery for conducting them from the district level to the highest levels of state government for decades. Perhaps the most uplifting part of this job is witnessing firsthand each year how ordinary Virginians, motivated by a strong civic spirit, put in grueling hours at neighborhood polling places so citizens can vote. Up and down the line in Virginia, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, election officials interpreted it without regard to party or ideology, helping the Virginia electorate translate its collective will and wisdom into the government policy
The system was never perfect. Errors occur. Old technology fails. There is embezzlement and embezzlement, but deliberate misconduct on a scale that can alter the legitimate outcome of an election is very rare.
One validation is the risk mitigation audits that the Department of Elections conducts after each statewide election, as required by Virginia law.
In the 2020 US Senate and Presidential races, the audit found that the risk of a mistake large enough to overturn the results of the election (wins for Democrat Biden and Senator Mark Warner) was less than one ten-thousandth of a percentage point. Put another way, the audit found that accuracy levels for both runs exceeded 99.9999%.
For the 2021 race, dominated by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his GOP ticket, the risk mitigation audit tested two House races: the House District 13 won by Democrat Danica Roem over Republican Christopher Stone, both of Manassas, and the District 75 won Republican Otto Wachmann over Democrat Roslyn Tyler, both of Sussex, and again found accuracy levels above 99.7%.
Malicious efforts to illegally or fraudulently influence an outcome are rare if official prosecutions or litigation are a reliable measure.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has created a searchable online database of all the “recent proven cases of voter fraud across the country” he can find. For context, consider the early 1990s. He calls the database “a sampling” and “not an exhaustive or complete list.”
The database, which spans at least eight presidential elections, documents 1,375 proven cases of fraud. Of that total, 1,182 resulted in criminal convictions, 48 resulted in civil penalties, 103 resulted in a diversion program, and 42 resulted in official or judicial findings, which can sometimes overturn · alter the result of an election or exclude a candidate from voting.
Twenty of the 1,375 cases were in Virginia. They date from 2007, and none involved findings that overturned the election. Six of the cases were false registrations, and five each were for ineligible votes, most by felons, and ballot petition fraud, most by false signatures. The most serious case, tried in 2007, involved the former Appalachian mayor and 14 others who were convicted of conspiring to buy votes in the 2004 municipal election with, among other things, cigarettes, beer and pork skin. The mayor served two years in prison and two years of supervised home detention in what the Heritage Foundation calls “the largest voter fraud conspiracy to date in Virginia.”
The most serious case, tried in 2007, involved the former Appalachian mayor and 14 others who were convicted of conspiring to buy votes in the 2004 municipal election with, among other things, cigarettes, beer and pork skin.
Because the database only includes cases where there was a decisive result, it does not reflect the recent indictment of Michele White, a former Prince William County election official, on corruption charges as announced by the Miyares. Like The Washington Post reported on September 7current Prince William County Recorder Eric Olsen said a small number of votes in the 2020 election may have been affected, but not enough to affect election results.
Electoral or electoral fraud is a serious matter in a democracy. He deserves to be prosecuted. For every vote cast illegally or for every action that falsifies or deceives someone of the right to vote, a citizen is deprived of his right to vote, the most precious of blessings in a democratic republic. The same goes for deceptive and intimidating voter suppression tactics.
But to claim that it’s somehow pervasive, as the “election integrity” crusades rooted in Trump’s corrosive election lies do, is a mistake.
Consider that in the 15-year period during which these 20 Virginia cases were decided, nearly 41 million Virginians voted in the fall general election. This does not count special elections, municipal or county races or primaries.
It is not a ratio that requires a call to arms.
Miyares knows it. He’s a smart guy and a good lawyer. He knows that the office to which he was elected already has “full authority to do whatever is necessary or appropriate to enforce the election laws or to prosecute violations thereof.” His prosecution of White had already demonstrated this better than his subsequent announcement of a bunko election team ever could.
His striking power is less than it seems. It has no separate budget. It will be composed primarily of staff who can combine election investigations with other tasks to which they are already assigned.
But alas, it’s good politics, for Miyares anyway. Not only does he fire up a Republican base that will likely be asked to choose between him and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in 2025 for the party’s gubernatorial nomination, but the unit will soon have plenty of fodder because of an imminent change in the party composition of the electoral boards in the 133 localities.
Among the spoils going to the winner of the gubernatorial election is the right to have the new governor’s party dominate state and local election boards. Next year, these boards will change from Democratic majorities to Republican majorities. And in Miyares, they have an attorney general with a squad ready to pounce on any perceived irregularities they feed him.
How best to make a case for restoring the restrictive voting laws that the GOP enforced while dominating the General Assembly for most of the first two decades of the 21st century? Laws like the photo ID requirement and rigid restrictions on early and absentee voting that made it harder for marginalized and disabled Virginians to vote were repealed after Democrats briefly won full control of the General Assembly in 2019. Republicans, who regained a slim majority in the House last year, advanced voting restriction bills in the 2021 legislative session, but they died in a Democratic Senate.
Let’s hope Miyares and his party could move beyond an election in which Virginia (and the nation) repudiated the most noxious president in American history without trying to immolate the nation’s flawed but solid electoral infrastructure with a faithful obsequious to Trump’s delusions. Virginia showed the country last November, just a year after overwhelmingly electing Democrats, that its system is not rigged against Republicans.
And nothing made the case better than Miyares’ stunning win, the most unexpected of all.
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