Virginia Elections Commissioner Rejects Complaint from Sen. Amanda Chase

A post-election complaint filed by Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, has no basis in state law and won’t lead to the type of recount or audit sought by Chase, according to a formal response Tuesday from Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals.

Beals — an appointee of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin who once worked as an aide to Chase — indicated that Chesterfield County Registrar Missy Vera followed the law when she gave the Chesterfield GOP an opportunity to send an observer for the testing of ballot scanning machines used for early voting. Chase has been disputing her primary loss to former Republican state Sen. Glen Sturtevant on the basis that the Chesterfield GOP selected a Sturtevant campaign staffer as its observer for that machine test.

“The general registrar has no authority over who the Republican or Democratic parties select in any given contest as their representative or if a representative is present at all,” wrote Beals, who leads the Virginia Department of Elections.

Those party observers have a “limited role” and only watch the process, Beals continued.

“Though the Department recognizes the importance of party and/or candidate representation during logic and accuracy testing, the lack of such representation is not delineated in Virginia law as a reason for an unsuccessful candidate to challenge the winner of a primary election,” Beals wrote.

The letter from Beals, which the Virginia Mercury obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, is the strongest signal yet that Chase has no legal avenue to dispute her loss. Though the hard-right senator has been raising money on the prospect of a legal challenge, she has not filed a lawsuit. Her complaint, a less formal challenge filed with election officials rather than a court of law, contains no evidence that the vote counts were improper.

Chase has been threatening to run a write-in campaign in the Republican-leaning district outside Richmond. If she follows through on that plan, it could potentially hurt the GOP’s chances of holding a must-have seat by splitting the Republican vote and dampening support for Sturtevant.

Beals told Chase neither the elections department nor the Virginia State Board of Elections has the legal authority to take the actions Chase requested.

Sturtevant won by a large enough margin (more than 1%) that Chase cannot request a recount, Beals wrote, and the deadline for contesting the primary election in court has already passed. The state’s process for contesting election results requires complaints to be filed in court within 10 days of a primary election. Chase lost her primary to Sturtevant on June 20. She filed her complaint with the board on July 5, more than two weeks after the primary.

Chase has also pointed to a section of Virginia’s election handbook instructing registrars that if they choose to invite any candidates to observe machine testing, they should invite all candidates in the race. Chase has made speculative allegations the ballot scanning machines could have been tampered with during the test because her campaign wasn’t present, claims Chesterfield election officials have flatly denied. Beals said the guidance about inviting all candidates is simply a “best practice.”

“Consequently, an alleged violation of this provision does not endow a candidate with a legal right or remedy by which she may challenge the results of a contested election,” Beals said.

Chase didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. In a Facebook post-Tuesday, Chase said she was going “off the grid” for a week and heading to the beach.

Response to Sen Chase 7.11.23

by Graham Moomaw, Virginia Mercury

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