Opinion
Commentary: Miyares plays ‘election integrity’ politics to romance the MAGA base
Politicians will play politics. And there’s nothing wrong with that, generally.
The problem comes when the malignant notion takes hold that an overwhelmingly clean, fair process of administering elections is fair game for a partisan disinformation campaign to subvert public faith in the process and impose a corrupt system under one-party control.
The MAGA wing of today’s Republican Party knows that its ever-deepening right-wing nationalism, its penchant for bizarre and baseless conspiracies and the extremist candidates it attracts will alienate America’s mainstream and make it harder to win fair elections in an increasingly diverse nation without its heavy thumb on the scales.
The latest to give comfort toward that antidemocratic end is Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is creating a 20-person “election integrity unit” in his office. That’s particularly dismaying because Miyares is not among the Republicans who falsely claim President Joe Biden usurped Donald Trump’s presidency through fraud. At least that’s what the office’s spokeswoman, Victoria LaCivita, recently assured the Mercury’s Graham Moomaw.
But Miyares can’t resist playing politics and pandering to the GOP’s Trumpist hard-liners whom he could ask to nominate him for governor of Virginia in less than three years.
I’ve covered elections and the machinery for carrying them out from the precinct level to the top echelons of state government for decades. Perhaps the most edifying part of that job is witnessing firsthand each year how ordinary Virginians, motivated by a strong civic spirit, invest exhausting hours at neighborhood voting precincts so citizens can vote. Up and down the line in Virginia, under Republican and Democratic administrations, election officials played it by the book without regard to party or ideology, helping Virginia’s electorate translate its collective will and wisdom into government policy.
The system was never perfect. Mistakes occur. Antiquated technology fails. There’s both misfeasance and malfeasance, but deliberate wrongdoing on a scale that can alter an election’s legitimate outcome is exceedingly rare.
One validation is the risk-limiting audits the Department of Elections conducts after each statewide election as required by Virginia law.
In the 2020 presidential and U.S. Senate races, the audit found that the risk of a mistake large enough to reverse outcomes of the election – victories for Democrats Biden and Sen. Mark Warner – was less than a ten-thousandth of a percentage point. Expressed another way, the audit found accuracy levels for both races exceeded 99.9999%.
For the 2021 race, dominated by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his GOP ticket, the risk-limiting audit tested two House of Delegates races – the 13th House District won by Democratic Del. Danica Roem over Republican Christopher Stone, both from Manassas, and the 75th District won by Republican Otto Wachmann over longtime Democratic Del. Roslyn Tyler, both of Sussex – and again found accuracy levels exceeding 99.7%.
Malicious efforts to vote illegally or fraudulently influence an outcome are scarce if prosecutions or official litigation are a reliable measure.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has created a searchable online database of all the “recent proven instances of election fraud from across the country” that it can find. For context, it considers the early 1990s recent. It calls the database “a sampling” and “not an exhaustive or comprehensive list.”
The database, spanning at least eight presidential elections, documents 1,375 proven instances 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 the result of an election or exclude a candidate from the ballot.
Twenty of the 1,375 cases were in Virginia. They date to 2007, and none involved findings that reversed elections. Six of the cases were false registrations, and five each were for ineligible voting, mostly by felons, and ballot petition fraud, mostly bogus signatures. The most serious case, tried in 2007, involved the former mayor of Appalachia and 14 others who were convicted of conspiring to buy votes in the 2004 municipal election with, among other things, cigarettes, beer and pork rinds. The mayor served two years in jail and two years of monitored home detention in what the Heritage Foundation calls “the largest voter fraud conspiracy to date in Virginia.”
Because the database includes only cases in which there has been a dispositive outcome, it does not reflect the recent indictment of Michele White, a former top Prince William County election official, on corruption charges as announced by Miyares’ office. As The Washington Post reported on Sept. 7, current Prince William County Registrar Eric Olsen said that a small number of votes in the 2020 election may have been affected, but not enough to affect any election results.
Voting or election fraud is a serious business in a democracy. It deserves to be prosecuted. For every vote illegally cast or every action that falsifies or cheats someone out of the right to vote, a citizen is deprived of his or her franchise, the most precious of blessings in a democratic republic. The same goes for deceitful and intimidating voter-suppression tactics.
But to assert that it is somehow pervasive, as “election integrity” crusades rooted in Trump’s corrosive election lies do, is wrong.
Consider that in the 15-year span during which those 20 Virginia cases were adjudicated, nearly 41 million Virginians voted in fall general elections. That doesn’t count special elections, local municipal or county races or primaries.
That’s hardly a ratio that demands a call to arms.
Miyares knows that. 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 prosecute violations thereof.” His prosecution of White had already demonstrated that better than his subsequent announcement of an election bunko squad ever could.
There’s less to his strike force than meets the eye. It has no separate budget. It will be composed primarily of staff who can juggle election investigations alongside other duties to which they are already assigned.
But, alas, it’s good politics – for Miyares, anyway. Not only does it stoke a GOP 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 stands to get a lot of fodder tossed its way soon because of an impending change in the partisan makeup of electoral boards in all 133 localities.
Among the spoils that go to the victor of gubernatorial elections is the right to have the new governor’s party dominate state and local electoral boards. Next year, those boards shift from Democratic majorities to GOP majorities. And in Miyares, they have an attorney general with a platoon poised to pounce on any perceived irregularities they feed him.
How better to contrive an argument for restoring the restrictive voting laws the GOP implemented while it dominated the General Assembly for most of the first two decades of the 21st century? Laws like the photo ID requirement and rigid constraints on early and absentee voting that made it hard 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 House majority last year, advanced voting restriction bills in the 2021 legislative session, but they died in a Democratic Senate.
You’d hope that Miyares and his party could advance beyond one election in which Virginia (and the nation) repudiated the most noxious president in U.S. history without trying to immolate the nation’s imperfect yet solid election infrastructure in obsequious fealty to Trump’s delusions. Virginia proved to the country last November, just one year after it had resoundingly elected Democrats, that its system is not rigged against Republicans.
And nothing made the case better than Miyares’ own impressive victory, the most unexpected of them all.
by Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury
Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.
Opinion
Community Kindness Shines Through in Warren County Amid Division
Even though our Country and our County seem to be in turmoil and divided, there are still wonderful and helpful people here. On Labor Day, I was working in my yard, stumbled, and fell backward, unable to get on my feet. I was lying on the grass, and two ladies, mother and daughter, were driving past, saw me, turned their car around, helped me to my feet and to my porch, and got help for me.
Many thanks, Mary! Also, thanks to my Rivermont Baptist Church Family for the food and cleaning assistance, especially since I cannot use my right hand due to the broken wrist.
Sylvia Dawson
Warren County
Opinion
Power Grabs, Parental Guidance, and Public Libraries: A Front Royal Reflection
I am a prior citizen of Front Royal, VA. My husband and I raised seven children in our home there. As our family grew with the addition of grandchildren, several of them also lived and attended schools in Warren County, VA. Due to family obligations in North Carolina, we moved from Front Royal two years ago. We all have fond memories of our growing years in Front Royal, and those recollections include our trips to Samuels Public Library. It was with some consternation that I read an article in The Washinton Post regarding the challenge to the library via withholding funding for the library in an effort for “concerned citizens” to exercise control over the governing management of the library.
It is ironic that we relocated to a county in NC that is facing similar challenges in our local school district over school libraries and their content and availability. This challenge is also led by a group of citizens deeply engaged in their religious faith, which they strongly believe is guiding them in this process. The only difference is that extortion is not a tool available to the concerned citizens in NC against the School Board.
For the record, my children who graduated from high school in Warren County include six children who went on to college and received degrees; three have received their master’s degrees, many graduated with dual degrees, and all are successful members of their communities and in their professions. Their careers include work in the field of education, social service work to assist and support the homeless and disenfranchised, work for the Federal Gov’t directly and indirectly, and those who own/have owned their own businesses. I feel very confident making this assertion; the trajectory of a child’s life does not hinge on the content of any single book but is essentially reliant on the character of their parents or parental authorities in their lives. Allowing your children to grow into adulthood with guidance and honest conversation is so much more impactful than sheltering them from the things the parents find offensive or harmful.
I am not taking issue with someone’s concern about any content in any reading material, it is as much your right to be concerned as it is mine to feel that exposure to all aspects of society helps a child refine and develop their own sensibilities as they become adults. It seems the library has put in place a system to help parents limit their child’s exposure by allowing parental controls on their child’s access to the materials they have concerns over. That these parents feel that they need to control any other parent’s rights can be interpreted as nothing less than a desire to control more than their own child’s access and to assume control of all taxpayers in Warren County. This is not democracy, and it is not faithful supplication to God. It is nothing more than a power grab in a performative act of assumed high morality.
Furthermore, the publication of individuals’ names is nothing more than a bullying tactic hoping to incite vindictive rhetoric against those individuals. That the Board of Supervisors didn’t hold the line at the bullying “conservative activists” and then joined their ranks by withholding their funding and offering the MOA makes me question their suitability to be Supervisors. They were elected to be leaders of sorts for their districts to seek consensus in untenable challenges.
I am happy to see the Board did reach approval for funding for the library. The Town of Front Royal and Warren County are fortunate to have this institution, its friendly and helpful staff, and its commitment to the community. I was born and raised in the close suburbs right outside of the Washington DC line. When my first husband passed away, I was left with four young daughters, just reaching their teen years. I had a demanding job that kept me from keeping a normal nine-to-five routine. I felt it was critical to move to a community where we had neighbors that would look out for us and where the girls could participate in sports and after-school activities without needing transportation from me. I chose Front Royal, and although it lacked some of the benefits they had in Fairfax, it brought them a multitude of benefits that helped shape them into the adults they became. Front Royal has always had factions that didn’t see eye to eye on certain issues, but I never experienced the excessiveness that has begun to permeate the social climate in Front Royal. I hope this incident gives everyone pause to regain common civility and respect for their neighbors and allow the differences to create the best of the community and enhance the future of its upcoming generations.
Barbara Price
Hickory, NC
Opinion
County Board Chair Cook Reminded of Campaign Promises
There never seems to be any shortage of controversy in our little (but growing) community. While election season heats up, the current library distraction diverting attention away from the issues that impact ALL members of the community, and not just the whims of a local faction whose agenda appears to be ramming their opinion of morality down the community’s throat is somewhat disturbing. I don’t agree with some of the literature that is being presented in our public library, but I also believe there are freedoms that take precedence over these objections where a common ground can be achieved.
Frequently, I am reading and hearing remarks on the Fork District and Board Chairman Vicky Cook. Vicki has always been cordial, open, and non-judgmental in my professional dealings with her. However, I would like to remind her of her campaign platform, as reported in 2021. These paraphrased quotes from a written publication are worthy, in my opinion, of reprinting:
“What I bring into the mix is to have a little more critical thinking. I’m really into common sense solutions that’s gonna benefit everybody”. Continuing in this same vain, “I’m really big into integrity and transparency and accountability”.
Finally, Cook wants to “bring unity” to the community. (Warren County Supervisor Candidate Offers Management Skills, NV Daily, July 18, 2021).
Chairman Cook, I hope you continue to exercise these tenets that you publicly stated and committed to when you knocked on my door asking for my vote.
Gregory A. Harold
Warren County, VA
Opinion
Defending Samuels Public Library: A Plea for Reason and Inclusivity
Dear Mrs. Cook:
It is with a heavy heart that I write to you regarding the unconscionable withholding of funding for Samuels Public Library, which will very likely result in its imminent closing.
Our library is the jewel of Warren County. How can the Board of Supervisors allow a tiny group of fanatical interlopers – many of whom didn’t even own a library card – dictate how our library is managed?
Shame on the BOS for allowing the situation to devolve to the point where our beloved Library Director, Michelle Ross, felt compelled to resign. Shame on you! How will we ever attract accomplished, educated and enlightened applicants to fill her vacant position when the BOS allows an obtuse, misinformed and manipulative minority to control an institution which is the pride of our town. It is heartbreaking to reflect on the disrespect, contempt and lack of support which the BOS has shown toward Ms. Ross and her earnest staff. Shame!
My family has lived in Warren County for 40 years. My sister was on the Board of Trustees when the library transitioned from its previous in-town location to Criser Road, where it has become a cherished hub for ALL citizens of Warren County. I have donated countless hours to the library as a past Friends of Samuels Library board member and as a volunteer shelving books, working at community events and manning the Epilogue Bookstore. Will any of the group of library dissidents contribute any time, effort or money towards the care and feeding of our treasured library? Doubt it!
Everyone in the world has members of the LGBTQ+ community as dear friends and much-loved family members – whether they wish to acknowledge that or not. A strictly heterosexual world has never existed – neither within the human species nor within the wider natural world. To deny their existence, both within our community and within the vast literature of our culture, is to oppose reality. Same-sex families are everywhere. Come out from under your rock, open your eyes, and join the 21st Century.
The BOS and their legal team should be embarrassed at the wording of the current MOU as submitted to the Samuels Board of Trustees. Beyond the question of how the county will find the funding to pay library staff county wages and benefits, how will the county find volunteers to perform the myriad tasks which keep the library functioning as an active community center when the BOS seems bent on allowing a group of religious zealots to destroy our library as we have come to know and love it. Clearly there is no longer separation of church and state within Warren County.
In closing, as a young girl taught by Ursuline nuns in the 1960’s, one of my favorite activities was walking downtown with my friends to our beautiful Ferguson Public Library where I was allowed to take out any book I desired. When it came time to choose a confirmation name, the nuns brought my class to the much tinier Catholic library run by the Knights of Columbus to read children’s books about the lives of the saints. I would encourage the religious activists of our community to invest the time and effort required to establish their own non-secular library and to cease their undesired meddling in our honorable Samuels Public Library.
Sincerely,
Margaret E. Thursland
Fork District
Front Royal, Virginia
Opinion
Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation District: A Call to Support Dr. Mark Huddleston and Write-In Candidate Emma Bricker for Soil and Water Conservation Leadership
To the residents of Warren County: Both Warren County Directorships for the Board of the Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation District are coming up for election this November 7. Early voting commences on September 22.
Let me say that Dr. Mark Huddleston, the only listed candidate on the ballot and retired President Emeritus of the University of New Hampshire, is fully deserving of our vote.
To fill the second position of Board Director, we will need a write-in candidate. I heartily endorse Emma Bricker and urge you to write her name where provided on the ballot. Emma is a Master Gardener, has a degree in plant science with a specialization in native plants, and has been a leader in the recent Browntown conservation planning campaign. I know her also to be a skilled computer technician. Emma Bricker deserves our support because of her environmental capacities and dedication.
Sincerely,
Richard W. Hoover
Warren County Director
Chairman of the Board
Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation District
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the letters published on this page are solely those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Royal Examiner’s editorial team, its affiliates, or advertisers. The Royal Examiner does not endorse or take responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or validity of any statements made by the authors. The statements and claims presented in the letters have not been independently verified by the Royal Examiner. Readers are encouraged to exercise their own judgment and critical thinking skills when evaluating the content. Any reliance on the information provided in the letters is at the reader’s own risk.
While the Royal Examiner makes every effort to publish a diverse range of opinions, it does not guarantee the publication of all received letters. The Royal Examiner reserves the right to edit letters for clarity, length, and adherence to editorial guidelines. Moreover, the Royal Examiner does not assume any liability for any loss or damage incurred by readers due to the content of the letters or any subsequent actions taken based on these opinions.
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Opinion
Board of Usurpervisors
Rather than arbitrate business, property, and tax disputes, our board of supervisors has chosen to start a cultural conflagration within our community. It is all quite clear they did this for cheap political gain. You don’t have to be savvy or experienced to see it.
Witness these excellent letters to the editor which outline the hypocrisy and mismanagement on display:
“Facts, Accounting, and Homework, Oh My!! A Library Supporter Digs Into the Finances”
Published August 23, 2023, by Sonja Carlborg of Front Royal.
Or, these excellent pieces of lay reporting,
“Investigating the Reasons for the Book Ban Campaign”
Published August 27, 2023, by Bridget Randolph of Brooklyn, NYC, formerly of Warren County, VA.
“Fact-Checking the BOS/Library MOA Negotiation”
Published September 10, 2023, by Bridget Randolph, of Brooklyn, NYC, formerly of Warren County, VA.
I was misled, personally on the phone, in the week prior to the first June 6, 2023 board meeting, by board member Jerome “Jay” Butler himself.
He assured me this would be a simple “reshuffling of some books”, yet we have since learned it was that and so much more. We have since learned this hateful harassment campaign started in January of this year and later even involved an outdoor beer party or two, complete with prizes. I have no words to express my contempt for those on the board willing to deceive me and other citizens about a topic so dear, yet with only a week or two of foreknowledge of their duplicity.
I went to school with someone who suffered violence and spoke of being gay during the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. And, Mr. Jay Butler, I carefully witnessed the facial expressions and the false piety on display in the front row that night on June 6, 2023, at the Warren County Board of Supervisors meeting.
I sat through the whole 4-5 hours and stood and shook your hand later, feeling sure we would quickly reach a reasonable solution. I lack polite or appropriate words for you, nor board member Delores Oates, who clearly ‘hates the queers’ enough to blow $20,000 on the topic. My God, Jesus would slap you both.
The current members of the Board of Supervisors that have voted for withholding Samuels funding are complicit in the harassment and physical endangerment of Samuels staff. They have hounded Samuels out of a caring, thoughtful, and apolitical library director, Michelle Ross. In a time of such heightened tensions as this, a time when falsehoods multiply like cultivated seeds, it is beyond reckless to encourage such things.
The current board of supervisors, minus Cheryl Cullers, who voted against this nonsense, owes the following:
1.) A private apology to Michelle Ross.
2.) A private apology to each of the library staff whom they’ve harassed and placed in increased physical danger (witness D.C. Pizzagate). This includes *everyone* on the staff.
3.) A private apology to each of the families who have suffered the suicide of a family member yet bravely came before you to testify to your wrong-headedness and plead for empathy.
4.) A public apology for being so simple-minded and politically focused that you could not see the right path from the wrong and took a bigoted, hateful, and deceitful approach to political life. More than one of our Board of Supervisors has gone against their campaign promises and mandates. Witness Jay Butler’s promise to “keep government out of our personal lives.” Yeah, right!
Should these or funding for our wonderful Samuels Public Library not be forthcoming, I can only pray for our county and republic.
Daniel Silsby
Warren County, VA
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the letters published on this page are solely those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Royal Examiner’s editorial team, its affiliates, or advertisers. The Royal Examiner does not endorse or take responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or validity of any statements made by the authors. The statements and claims presented in the letters have not been independently verified by the Royal Examiner. Readers are encouraged to exercise their own judgment and critical thinking skills when evaluating the content. Any reliance on the information provided in the letters is at the reader’s own risk.
While the Royal Examiner makes every effort to publish a diverse range of opinions, it does not guarantee the publication of all received letters. The Royal Examiner reserves the right to edit letters for clarity, length, and adherence to editorial guidelines. Moreover, the Royal Examiner does not assume any liability for any loss or damage incurred by readers due to the content of the letters or any subsequent actions taken based on these opinions.
In submitting a letter to the editor, authors grant the newspaper the right to publish, edit, reproduce, or distribute the content in print, online, or in any other form.
We value the engagement of our readers and encourage open and constructive discussions on various topics. However, the Royal Examiner retains the right to reject any letter that contains offensive language, personal attacks, or violates any legal regulations. Thank you for being a part of our vibrant community of readers and contributors, and we look forward to receiving your diverse perspectives on matters of interest and importance.
