I am a long-time member of the Electoral Board in a rural Virginia county. For background, each Virginia municipality has an Electoral Board, three-members, two from the same party as the governor, one from the other party, thus, all current Electoral Boards are 2 Dem, 1 Rep. We are nominated by the local Party chairs and appointed by the local Chief Circuit Court Judge. Our Board determined a long time ago that we would not have any split votes — everything we decide is 3-0; we will not allow political considerations to affect our electoral operations.
Today our General Registrar received an email from the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) asking for the following information:
- Date, time, place we will conduct Logic & Accuracy testing of our voting machines before the Nov 2019 election
- Model numbers and descriptions of our voting machines and the devices we use as electronic pollbooks
- List of our Officers of Election (the volunteers who work at the polls)
- Copy of the Statement of Results we use to report voting results
All of this is public information. We inform the local party chairs of all this info and invite them to observe our L&A testing and Officer of Election training — they rarely show up.
As several diarists have pointed out, the Nov 2019 election in Virginia is critical. Currently, our Gov, Lt Gov and Atty Gen are Democrats, serving until January 2022. The General Assembly is controlled by Republicans: State Senate is 21 Rep, 19 Dem; House of Delegates is 51 Rep, 49 Dem. Most projections are that Democrats will take control of the General Assembly in Nov 2019, thereby giving Democrats control of the 2021 redistricting that follows the 2020 census.
I have talked with our county Registrar and my two colleagues on the Electoral Board. All of us — including the Republican member — are suspicious. We are a small rural county; Registrar’s office is tiny; she has one part-time assistant. We do not have the capacity to monitor a team of “observers,” especially if they decide to question and interrupt our every move. We plan to meet with our sheriff later this week and ask if he will provide us with a couple of deputies in case RPV “observers” show up and disrupt our proceedings.
I have queries out to neighboring county Electoral Board members to see if they received the same message, which I assume they did.
I hate to be suspicious, but, I just don’t trust them.