VA's Vanishing Right to Challenge Illegal Voters
A helpful tool to review Virginia's new, troublesome election laws. Also, Judge in D.C. notices that theoretical 'harms' are not enough to stop common-sense security measures with mail-in ballots.
In this issue of EPEC Team:
—Judge Declines to Stop EO on Ballot Security; Postal Service Begins Rule-Making
—Virginians’ Vanishing Right to Challenge Illegal Voters
—Download a New Tool to Track Virginia’s Controversial Election Laws
Election security groups say they are heartened to see a Washington, D.C., district judge decline to block President Trump’s March 31 Executive Order that requires the United States Post Office to enhance mail-in ballot security.
Judge Carl Nichols’ order is a win for the security-related measures in the EO, entitled: “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”
Within days of the March 31 EO, Democrat senators and aligned activist groups rushed into court asking for an injunction, claiming theories about harm and that it was likely unconstitutional.
The judge denied their motion, ruling they failed to show they could succeed on the merits, and that plaintiffs have not suffered any harm at present, much less harm that is “certain,” “great,” and “imminent.”
“Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present,” Judge Carl Nichols wrote in the May 28 ruling.
See the ruling here.
This is huge, said Cleta Mitchell of the Election Integrity Network, during an appearance on the Warroom Podcast Friday. “This judge applied the same rules of standing that are never applied to left-wing groups.”
It is important to point out, Mitchell added, that election mail is a special kind of mail to the U.S.P.S.
The EO orders the U.S.P.S. to promote regulations that ensure the mail-in ballots are delivered according to statutes that govern the federal postal service. This ensures they are not delivered to commercial addresses, abandoned warehouses, or other addresses prohibited from receiving mail-in ballots.
The March 31 EO provides actions that the U.S. Postal Service can take to assure mail-in ballots are transiting with secure tracking codes as required by federal statute.
The EO also directs agencies such as the Social Security Administration (SSA), in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, to help states verify identity and federal election voter eligibility by providing them lists of eligible voters.
More challenges to the EO are underway; for now, the judge’s ruling frees up the U.S.P.S. to start rule-making to ensure that mail-in ballots are secured.
It got the ball rolling today by proposing new rules “that would require states to provide voter-level data on mail-in ballots in federal elections, one day after a federal judge declined to immediately block President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening mail-in voting rules,” as CNBC reported.
It directs the federal postal service to launch mail envelope design reviews to help states comply with U.S.P.S. mailing standards, including barcode placement.
It also promotes a rule that would establish a process by which:
(1) states (including authorized election officials and their mail service providers) will notify the Postal Service of the individuals to whom they are mailing a mail-in or absentee ballot, along with the unique barcode applied to the outbound and return ballot mail envelope for such individuals such that the name and barcode of the voter will be included on a Mail-In and Absentee Participation List;
(2) states (including authorized election officials and their mail service providers) may thereafter add to or modify the list of enrollees until the last day that ballots may be mailed out to individuals under state law;
(3) the Postal Service will provide to each state’s chief election official a final State-Specific Mail-In and Absentee Participation List for each state compiling the names of all enrolled individuals in such state, along with the barcodes associated with such individuals’ mail-in or absentee ballots.
More in our next report. The U.S.P.S. rule-making notice is here. #
Virginians’ Vanishing Right to Challenge Illegal Voters
While Virginians were dealing with a rushed referendum in March and April on redistricting — which the VA Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional — the governor was signing a flurry of controversial election bills into law.
Chief among them is HB 640. As of July, it eliminates the process by which any voter could challenge, in a polling place on the day of an election, the right of any other voter to cast a ballot. As of July 1st, anyone who makes good-faith challenges to an elector will have to go to a Richmond court, and hire lawyers.
The impact emboldens unlawful balloting by removing a long-standing right in election laws that allow citizens to challenge whether their votes are being diluted by an illegal or ineligible elector.
Left-wing groups have targeted the long-standing process of challenging a voter’s eligibility by accusing any good-faith challenge to Jim Crow-era abuses that the Voting Rights Act abolishes. Their narrative is that voter fraud is “exceedingly” rare, while ignoring the growing cases of fraudulent balloting, and noncitizens with voting histories.
(See EPEC Team’s documentation of the more than 7,000 Virginia noncitizens who “self-identified” as ineligible to be on the voter rolls in the past three years. Before they were removed from the rolls, thousands racked up a history of felony voting violations that disenfranchised Virginia voters.)
Today, with noncitizens automatically flowing from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles’ system onto voter rolls in 19 states, the new Virginia law (HB 640) further curtails citizens’ rights to question whether a voter is eligible to cast a ballot. By removing deterrence measures, the law creates conditions that embolden election fraud — while eroding citizens’ right to be a part of their election process.
To find out more about the new laws that impact our elections and how elections are managed, EPEC Team encourages readers to download an Election Bill Tracker that was curated by the election security group Virginia Fair Elections.
Election experts Andi Bayer and Susan Hogge spent months following the Virginia Assembly’s debate and passage of the bills. They compiled the information into an easy-to-understand spreadsheet that is available to download, and will be updating the information on regular intervals as a service to the Commonwealth.
Download the Spreadsheet Here
The tracker list and new bills arrive amid a growing list of inconsistent appellate court rulings about the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — which states, including Virginia, are using to block or redefine what are “reasonable” voter-list activities.
Inconsistent and even distorted interpretations of the NVRA are also leading to a troubling trend: voter-roll information that is increasingly opaque to citizen oversight, while dual standards of voter-roll maintenance proliferate among states.
A filing by the Dept. of Justice, which asked the Supreme Court to review an NVRA case involving Arizona, is one among many examples. Thanks to unclear rulings about the 90-day “safe harbor” rule, many states allow noncitizens to remain on the voter rolls leading up to elections. In Arizona, two laws now govern the state’s elections.
“The DOJ made its argument on May 26 in a brief urging the high court to grant the petition in the case of Republican National Committee (RNC) v. Mi Familia Vota,” Zero Hedge noted.
The DOJ argues in its brief that the NVRA’s restrictions on taking individuals’ names off the list of eligible voters in the 90 days preceding an election “do not apply to noncitizens who were never eligible to register in the first place.
The motion for review refers to a prior ruling by the Ninth Circuit as “badly mistaken,” which deepens a split among federal courts of appeals, and “risks significant harm,” said Hashim Mooppan, filing as acting solicitor general.
Using the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit, “a State could never remove a noncitizen from its voter rolls once registered,” he said. “That cannot be correct and cries out for reversal,” Mooppan said, urging the Supreme Court to grant the RNC’s petition.
Inconsistent rulings by courts regarding the NVRA have also been used to curtail transparency in voter rolls that are supposed to be made public, such as withholding the month and date of a voter’s birthday as part of their registration.
The overall trend is that courts are allowing voter-list maintenance records, which are critical to public trust in elections, to become the sole province of state election officials — without any oversight, not even by the DOJ, as some courts have ruled.
EPEC Team and its partners are committed to raising the public’s knowledge of the impact of these Virginia laws and how they related to national trends. We urge readers to download the tracker to understand the impact of trusted elections. More in coming reports. #
Updates last version to correct reference to HB 640.
Great article!