Youngkin’s Election Reform Failure

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Recently, Virginia’s governor Glenn Youngkin signed Executive Order 35 (“EO 35”) “to protect the casting of legal ballots by legally eligible voters in Virginia’s elections, including stringent ballot security, complete and thorough counting machine testing, and best-in-the-nation voter list maintenance.” Nationally, the mainstream media portrayed EO 35 as a bold step to improve Virginia’s election integrity before the 2024 General elections.  

On the contrary, citizens investigating Virginia’s broken electronic voting systems know otherwise. We have discovered uncertified, unsecured electronic voting equipment and massively inflated voter rolls. Both issues also lead to the likelihood of absentee mail-in ballot fraud, not ballot security. Volunteers had to work outside the Republican political establishment to expose the current problems, notwithstanding the claims of EO 35. Virginia citizens have found the governor and the attorney general’s office to be uninterested in looking into claims of election integrity issues statewide. To the citizens engaged in thousands of hours of election integrity work, the EO 35 is more like lip service. 

Some Downstream Consequences from the Lack of Election Integrity in Virginia: 

Voter Registration Lists 

Virginia’s Registered Voter List (RVL) is grossly inflated — the consequence is likely inaccurate and unsecure results in 2024 unless corrective action is taken immediately. The Voter History List (VHL) must have extra votes, too, because some of the inflated ‘extra’ voters have voted in the last four elections.  In a recent pre-litigation letter filed against ELECT and Commissioner Susan Beals, the Virginia-based law firm of Holtzman Vogel cited that 101 of 133 counties/cities have registrations that exceed 90% of their respective eligible populations. Of those, 43 counties/cities have impossibly high ratios of registered voters — at greater than 100%. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reports that registration rates historically have been in the mid-70% range. Based on this and other corroborating data, we estimate that more than 1,000,000 extra registrations exist on the rolls, as the data suggests. Questionably Invalid Voter Registration IDs. 

Research has identified over 550,000 questionably invalid voter registration IDs based solely on incomplete or incorrect address data. This massive number came to light upon the RVL and Voter History Lists (VHL) analysis, including verifying address information through the USPS National Change of Address (NCOA) database. Contrary to claims by EO 35 and ELECT, the voters experience merely the pretense of cleaning the registration lists.  

Further, citizens found through FOIA that ELECT has yet to implement a process for proactively removing non-citizens. The governor’s claim of removing 6,303 non-citizens from the rolls fails to mention the lengthy timeline afforded the removals and that these non-citizens had self-identified. 

An Attempt to Push Registration Challenges Until After the November Elections 

Voters recently discovered through FOIA that on July 23, 2024, Beals issued an internal “Advisory” to Virginia’s registrars, limiting citizens’ ability to challenge voter registrations until after the November elections. She must have seen these challenges coming. Curiously, many of the forthcoming challenges to voter IDs will be due to the voters leaving their respective counties or the state while still on the current registration lists. Some who have moved out of state have also voted in one or more of the last four elections. The “Advisory” is without legal merit or enforceability because it supersedes federal election law. Law-abiding registrars would wisely ignore this unlawful directive or face accountability to the voters. 

Restricting Voter Registration Data 

In September 2024, ELECT announced that voter registrants’ birthdates would now only include the two-digit birth year. Again, the EO 35 feels more like lip service. While the governor’s proclamation appears to enforce election security and accuracy, through ELECT, he effectively weakens the ability of citizens to monitor the security and accuracy of the voter registration database. That ability is a civil right afforded by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. While it doesn’t appear significant, the decision to simplify the birthdate undermines the accuracy of voter registration data. This degradation in the quality of the voter data inhibits election integrity groups from identifying invalid registration IDs and minimizes the ability to challenge them. 

The Virginia State Board of Elections (VSBoE)

The Republican-leaning VSBoE has been negligent in its duties to uphold free and fair elections. Citizens close to the matter perceive that the Board needs to demonstrate more interest in citizens’ election integrity concerns. On more than a few occasions, citizens presented evidence of election system vulnerabilities and pointed to violations of federal election law to Chair John O’Bannon, but to no avail.  

In another example, O’Bannon voted with the Democrats to authorize the use of ES&S poll books despite informed election officers testifying that they observed that electronic poll books permitted 50% of registrants who appear to have an absentee ballot yet arrived to vote in person. 

Executive Order 35 Lip Service

EO 35 puts forth a great deal of mis- and disinformation, including many provably false statements:  

There is no need to dwell on these items. Informed readers will recognize their disingenuous nature. Repeating lies and half-truths does not make them true. 

Conclusion:

Countless citizens have spoken in public meetings, filed FOIAs, made presentations to Youngkin’s teams and public notices, and submitted letters of complaint — all with virtually no response or action from our election officials both at the state and local level. Acting outside the grip of the Virginia RINOs, Virginia voters have lodged legitimate investigations and made valid claims of electoral irregularities. Yet, electoral officials, including the governor, have not given the people a voice. This lack of action is a breach of sworn oath and is likely a dereliction of duty. And with EO 35, the governor comes out from behind the curtain to make exaggerated claims that cannot be backed up with facts.  

The citizens say that the elections in Virginia are not in compliance with federal law. We need them fixed now. Youngkin’s claims in EO 35 seem like late-in-the-game lip service rather than serving the best interest of Virginia voters.  

Image: Tony Webster