Posted on 01/30/2017 10:38:14 AM PST by Perseverando
As my regular readers know, we have been having some problems with our local Registrar’s Office and their willingness to abide by the Code of Virginia. (If you haven’t been keeping up, you can find my previous emails below.)
In a nutshell, we started last August trying to get a list of election officials in Lynchburg. We were refused because they said it was a personnel issue. After a couple of months, one of our Republican committee members found the relevant section of Virginia law that said not only did they have to provide it, but it has to be posted in their office. We finally got the list the week before the general election. There were a number of issues, but they said there wasn’t time to fix them.
Before Christmas we pointed out similar deviations from the law that related to the special election on January 10th. They ignored us.
Now we are following the letter of the law, which angers the Registrar’s Office because that isn’t the way they want to do things, and it isn’t the way they have been doing things for years. I had a talk this week with our one Republican member of the local election board, and he made a very thought provoking comment. He said that this is “new territory that hasn’t been challenged before.”
Think about that statement: “Territory that hasn’t been CHALLENGED.”
I have freely admitted that the local Republican Party has dropped the ball on this for years. No one told me about this when I was chairman, and I don’t think the chairs before or after me had any clue about our rights and responsibilities concerning election officials – which can have a critical effect on close elections. The other side did what they wanted to do without interference from us. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, but we should have known, and we should have done something about it long ago.
I’ve had any number of Sixth District people tell me that their county doesn’t have a problem with this, that it might only be a problem in the cities. That may well be true. But you do need to find out what new territories you should challenge in your county or city. It’s easy to say everything is fine, and it might be. But we used to think that here. What is happening in your locality that is hurting your efforts? If you don’t know what you don’t know, then you can’t even begin to fix it.
And this question isn’t just about finding and solving problem. What opportunities are you letting slip by simply because you don’t know about them or recognize them? How many votes are we losing because we are content with the status quo? Remember that Mark Obenshain lost a statewide election by 167 votes. Maybe we could have delivered those votes from the Sixth if we had known to find new territories to challenge.
You know your city or county much better than I do. Start by finding out how your electoral board and Registrar’s Office function then compare that to the Code of Virginia Section 24.2. Are there any discrepancies? Fix any that you find, then get creative about the opportunities that election law gives us.
And attend your local electoral board meetings. So long as we have a Democrat as governor, each electoral board in the Commonwealth will have two Democrat members and one Republican member. Go to the meetings to show your lone member that he has your support and that you have his back. The electoral board has a lot of power. Among other duties, they appoint the Registrar and make sure there are enough ballots for elections so that no one will think they are trying to suppress the vote.
It’s the little things that win elections. It’s the little things that lose them, too.
Cordially, Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.
P.S. I invite you to attend our next Sixth District Committee meeting on Saturday, February 4th, beginning at 10:00 a.m. at the Stonebridge Center, 45 Natural Bridge School Road in Natural Bridge Station. We will be electing two representatives to the State Central Committee, discussing our big District Gala in April with guest speaker Dinesh D’Souza, reviewing the lessons we learned from the special election on January 10th in the 22nd State Senate District, and discussing some potential litigation. All in all, it could be an interesting couple of hours.
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Very interesting post. Thank you.
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