VA Election Bills, and Veto Lists, Part 1

Election bills are stacking up in Virginia’s Democrat-majority assembly that have election-security groups raising alarms. EPEC Team tracks the 'veto list.'

Election-security working groups in Virginia are sounding alarms on specific election bills in the General Assembly that could intimidate election workers from volunteering in elections, confuse voter-list maintenance procedures, and make it harder for election workers to check eligibility of voters.

Democrats hold slim majorities in the Virginia Assembly. Many if not all of the election-related bills passed so far through House and Senate committees have received little to no Republican support.

EPEC Team is tracking why so many are so controversial -- and why they are landing on a Veto List for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to consider.

Here is a partial rundown:

--SB 364 – Elections; protection of election officials, penalty. This bill is seen more as an “invitation to lawfare” under color of law than a good-faith effort to enhance felony statutes on the books that already protect election officials from harassment.

Debate has centered on lack of clarity in key passages, such as how the bill would define what constitutes “imminent harm and threats of bodily injury” to election officials. It uses terms such as “threaten, intimidate, harass, and coerce” without defining these actions.

SB 364 would effectively create a special class of “hate crimes” for elections workers thanks to vague language that still plagues the bill.

Would a Freedom of Information Act request constitute “harassment”? (It’s been tried before by election officials facing FOIAs.)

The bill is still seen as a partisan vehicle to help well-funded groups target citizens for civil actions that would chill their First Amendment-protected speech.

Virginia already has criminal statutes on its books that protect election workers by imposing felony offenses from threats, intimidation, or other behavior designed to impede the voting process. Since SB 364 was first introduced, the original bill has been narrowed; but the definitions are still vague.

Maybe that’s why, last we checked, a final vote on this bill was delayed, yet again. See highlighted text change here.

-- All Voter-Registration Challenges Through….Richmond?

SB 196 would move the statutorily-protected process of challenging whether a voter is eligible to vote in a precinct out of the oversight of registrars and electoral boards and into the jurisdiction of the courts.

From there, depending on a locality court’s calendar, any rulings would be heard through Virginia’s Circuit Court in Richmond.

Registrars who maintain up-to-date, accurate voter registration lists for their areas and possess expertise on their voting precincts, would be blocked out.

The bill would do more than “prevent any Election Day challenges.” It would effectively do away with them by burying them in a court calendar, and then route any appeals from the courts, through a federal court in Richmond.

A companion bill in the House of Delegates, HB1534 has passed and is headed for Gov. Youngkin’s desk. Election-security groups are likely to send veto pens.

Other bills have a similar effect of removing authorities of local Electoral Boards to govern the types of voting operations to conduct in their localities.

For example, HB 1490 addresses rules for absentee voting in person and the hours of operation for voter satellite offices. (See highlighted text changes.) But fundamentally, it is another bill that seeks to change authority from Electoral Boards to either a county or city governing body, without clear examples of why this is necessary.

--The Return of ERIC

SB 606 includes language for voter registration rules, list maintenance, and data sharing as part of what is becoming a near-obsession with left-leaning groups to prop up the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) and force Virginia to rejoin.

Despite controversies over leaking of voter’s data to third-party political activists and multiple lawsuits that show ERIC’s by-laws put states out of compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, left-leaning groups and media have crafted a narrative that right-leaning groups are pushing a “conspiracy theory” over ERIC’s clearly partisan activities.

The problem is, the “narratives” over “conspiracies” regarding ERIC coming from the left never address multiple allegations that ERIC’s by-laws can put states in violation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Virginia’s Dept. of Elections exited ERIC for many reasons in 2023, following good-faith attempts to amend by-laws to comply with state and federal statutes. It would be hard to see how, after plotting new processes for sharing voter data with 40 other states and modernizing its voter-list maintenance pacts, that the Youngkin administration would reverse course now.

Observers believe that the Senate bill for ERIC as well as a similar bill in the House of Delegates (HB1177), appear to be headed for Gov. Youngkin’s veto pen.

—Ranked Choice Voting Amid Voter Rejection:

Ranked Choice Voting received mixed and confusing reactions from voters and election administrators in Arlington since the locality gave it a test-run in a local Democrat primary in 2023.

Arlington’s local city council junked further RCV pilots in local elections – then it abruptly reversed course to line up behind it amid a new lobbying push.

Already, many similar bills have been put aside, such as SB 270, held over for the 2025 legislative session.

But SB 428 is still in play. It would expand the use of RCV in local races. See markups on bill’s text changes here. 

Republicans in other state legislatures such as Utah have rejected RCV bills over concern that the process penalizes early-round winners in subsequent rounds and is fundamentally un-democratic.

During Virginia assembly debates on the RCV bills, Democrat Sen. Creigh Deeds (SD 11) argued that, because the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2021 was a ranked choice voting pilot, then Republicans should get behind these. However, Gov. Youngkin won decisively in first round voting, and the second, and the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth rounds as a huge slate of candidates was eliminated in round after round.

One might argue he won the primary without the need for further rounds.

RCV has been around in varying uses since the 1970s. It has never gained traction for the simple reason that in general, RCV’s methods introduce so-called “perverse outcomes” that penalize early-round candidates in closer races.

See a recent review of the history of RCV by EPEC’s CTO Jon Lareau here.

Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals has indicated in testimony before the Assembly that RCV would mean more contracts for third-party software providers to essentially manage the complex ranking systems that are deployed with each round of “voting” for a slate of candidates. That’s before we get to the “voting centers” in each locality that would be necessary to process the ballots in one place with RCV.

But perhaps most important, RCV receives low ranks from the voters themselves, such as in Arlington County. Will this bill make Gov. Youngkin’s veto list? Election groups are hoping it does.

—Bill Would Make non-citizens Driver Licenses Harder to Spot:

--SB 246 would create changes to so-called “limited-duration” drivers licenses and driver privilege cards that are used by non-citizens who are not eligible to vote. Because drivers’ licenses are by far the widest use of voter-id check — even though Virginia allows citizens to vote without IDs, election security groups are questioning the need for a bill that would only add more confusion to the process of verifying a voter’s eligibility when they use it to vote.

This is only a partial list of election bills stacking up in the Assembly; others may be sent back for amendments before the legislative session ends.

EPEC Team is increasing publications this week to keep up. More in the next edition tomorrow. That’s a wrap for now. #