VA Election Bills: Free Speech, J6, and More
Election bills under consideration in the Democrat-controlled assembly have all eyes on which ones will make it and which will receive Gov. Youngkin's veto pen. EPEC is tracking all of them.
Virginia’s Election Season is on -– not just for Early Voting, (Jan. 19-March 2nd) before the “Super Tuesday” Presidential Primary on March 5th. (Get up to speed here.)
Election-related bills are piling up in the Assembly.
Some have election experts alarmed for their potential to chill election participation — and speech, while others address the cost of voter data. Plus Jan. 6 bills.
Bills under consideration would expand ranked choice voting (RCV) to all elections, local and federal, and enter Virginia into the “National Popular Vote” compact for electing a president.
Another bill creates a new class of “hate crime” protection for election officials — and appears to promote censorship of speech with the help of social media platforms.
Democrats hold slim majorities in Senate and House of Delegates, raising questions over which ones will meet the veto pen of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).
Here is an overview with a link to Virginia’s Legislative Information System (LIS):
SB 364: Protection of Election Officials
Introduced by Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (D-39), SB 364 would extend a “threat” narrative that left-of-center groups are pushing by creating a new class of “hate crime” in Virginia. The bill adds “current or former status as an election official or employee of an election official to the categories of hate crimes that are to be reported to the central repository of information regarding hate crimes maintained by the Virginia State Police.”
SB 364 raises questions about whether merely questioning the management of an election can be turned into a “hate crime” under this bill. It includes language promoting censorship of speech.
For example, SB 364 says: No provider or user of an “interactive computer service on the Internet shall be liable for any action voluntarily taken by it in good faith to restrict access to material that the provider or user considers to be intended to incite hatred on the basis of current or former status as an election official or employee of an election official.”
Constitutional experts note it would likely fail on First Amendment grounds. Similar efforts by public-private partnerships to censor speech have been met with landmark litigation, currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. (See “The Twitter Files.”)
In addition, the New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department on behalf of publications Daily Wire and The Federalist over its financing of “the development and promotion of censorship technology and enterprises, including NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index.”
The complaint says these organizations “create blacklists to discredit and demonetize American media outlets they brand ‘risky’ or ‘unreliable,’ aiming to redirect advertiser money and audiences to outlets that publish favored viewpoints.”
See the press release on the lawsuits here.
The Senate Privileges and Elections (P&E) committee voted to send SB 364 to the Courts and Justice sub-committee.
HB 375: Presidential electors; National Popular Vote Compact
Introduced by House Delegate Dan I. Helmer (D-10), HB 375 would enter “Virginia into an interstate compact known as the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote. Article II of the Constitution of the United States gives the states exclusive and plenary authority to decide the manner of awarding their electoral votes.”
The compact has been passed in states with Democrat-majorities in the legislative and executive branches. Arizona, Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania are governed by Republican and Democrat majorities and are considered battleground states for this move to do away with the Electoral College.
HB 502: Adding Nonbinary sex/gender when registering to vote
Introduced by House Delegate Laura Jane Cohen (D-15), HB 502 would “offer any applicant the option of ‘male,’ ‘female,’ or ‘nonbinary’ when designating the applicant's sex or gender” for voter registration. The bill contains technical amendments, and is not clear on the process of switching one’s registration.
HB 1532: Addressing costs of voter registration lists and records
Introduced by House Delegate Tim Griffin (R-53), HB 1532 would address the high cost of voter-files for qualified groups to obtain records of “all registered voters and of persons who voted at any primary, special, or general election held in the four preceding years at no cost and manually prepared paper lists at actual cost to certain persons.”
Note to readers: EPEC is tracking this bill with great interest.
HB 658, SB 428, HB 841, SB 270: Expanding Ranked Choice Voting
At least four bills, linked above, would allow for any local or federal office to be conducted by ranked choice voting. Maine and Alaska Republicans are trying to remove the provision and Democrat officials such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, have vetoed RCV measures.
In Virginia, Arlington County tried RCV voting in 2023 as a trial. The verdict on whether to continue? “Mixed.”
The patron of the Senate bills is Sen. Schuyler Van Valkenburg (D-16). House bill sponsors are Joshua G. Cole (D-65) and Patrick A. Hope (D-1).
HB694: Counting AB ballots before close of polls
Introduced by House Delegate Israel D. O'Quinn (R-44), HB 694 allows central absentee precincts to “begin ascertaining and recording the number of votes cast by absentee ballots at any time after noon on the day of the election.”
Under current law, the bill says “absentee ballots that are counted by hand may be tallied, but not counted, at any time after noon on the day of the election, and no ballot totals for any absentee ballots shall be ascertained until after polls close.”
EPEC Team has been tracking questions over whether batch processing of votes is in use, based on analysis of the Daily Absentee List (DAL) files of early voting data.
“The bill also clarifies that vote totals for absentee ballots cast in person on voting systems cannot be determined until the day of the election.”
The bill has been referred to the Privileges & Elections committee.
SB 606, HB HB 1177: Returning Virginia to ERIC
Bills in the House and Senate would direct the Dept. of Elections to return to membership with Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which Virginia left in 2023. Background is here in EPEC’s FOIA library.
Mark Sickles (D-17) is the House sponsor. Schuyler Van Valkenburg (D-16) is the Senate patron.
Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals presented the Privileges & Elections Committee a report about Virginia’s expanding voter-data pacts since leaving ERIC membership. You can see the video here (by selecting Jan. 19 P&E link).
HB363, SB280: Insurrection, Rebellion, Riot
The politics of Jan. 6, 2021 have arrived in the Senate and House of Delegates with bills that seek to prohibit any citizen from “serving in position of public trust” if convicted of “certain offenses related to rioting and unlawful assembly or any substantially similar offense under the laws of the United States or any of its states or territories when such offense occurs (i) at a polling place, a voter satellite office, or any other location being used for voting or registration purposes; (ii) during the certification of an election; or (iii) at any other official proceeding related to an election.”
HB363, sponsored by Delegate David Reid (D-28), “requires any candidate for any elective office to submit an affidavit of eligibility attesting that such candidate is eligible to hold elective office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The bills are extensions of partisan efforts across the nation to remove the leading Republican candidate for president from primary voting by claiming “insurrection,” even though none of the charges related to “J6” have charged anyone with “insurrection” under the Civil War-era section of the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court is reviewing whether the use of Sarbanes-Oxley white-collar crime statues, which the Dept. of Justice is using against defendants facing misdemeanor trespassing charges from Jan. 6, is even Constitutional.
Per ScotusBlog: Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 following a series of high-profile investment scandals, most notably the collapse of Enron. The law increased protections for investors and whistleblowers in the corporate-finance industry.
One provision of that law, known as Section 1512(c), makes it a crime, carrying a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, to “corruptly” tamper with evidence for use in an official proceeding or “otherwise” obstruct that proceeding.
Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled to remove President Donald Trump from the Republican primary election — then stayed its ruling pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s review. Academics are arguing over whether states can wade into this issue at all, given that Congress would need to pass clarifying statutes. Maine’s high court also stayed a similar attempt by the Secretary of State, who made the move on her own. Many other states have dismissed the efforts.
These are just some of the many bills are under consideration in Virginia’s Assembly and P&E Committees. EPEC Team is expanding our publishing schedule to keep you posted and provide context.
To see more about these bills and all of the Assembly’s business, you can also track them via the Virginia Coalition for Open Government’s website:
Tracker is here: https://www.opengovva.org/vcog-2024-legislative-bill-chart
The Legislative Information System link is here: https://lis.virginia.gov
Review the list of all election bills here.
That’s a wrap for now. See you in the next edition of EPEC Team. #