Virginia Rising

Sen. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham, rallied residents at the Board of Elections meeting held during a statewide registrar and election board conference in Midlothian.

Registrars spoke loud and clear they want the forms and regulations to remain the same.

They were backed by Virginia residents lining the walls in a standing room only meeting. Many residents railed against these changes, blaming Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration for playing politics. The governor’s spokesman Brian Coy did not respond to phone calls Tuesday afternoon.

“It either makes voter fraud easier or harder, and I would contend it makes it easier,” Garrett said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “… You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Why do it?’ There’s not a single registrar — red, purple or blue — saying we need this.”

A few proponents for the form changes, including “progressive” organizations that engage residents in the political process, say the changes would prevent people from having their voter registrations improperly denied.

“I commend the staff for the changes to the form,” said Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, a statewide civic organization that assists voters in registering. “I think from a user perspective, it is a lot more user friendly.

“The readability of it, there are vast improvements on it.”

Voter registration applications include questions such as whether applicants are U.S. citizens, a felon with or without restored rights, have been declared incompetent and are age 18 or older.

The current regulations require these boxes to be checked. The felon box, for example, can be used to cross reference with state and out-of-state databases to verify whether a convicted felon has gone through the process of having rights restored.

Failure to fill in these boxes can cause a registrar’s office to automatically deny the application, although officials often reach out to the applicant to get the form completed fully, Garrett said, referencing conversations he’s had with multiple registrars.

Under the new regulations, failure to complete these boxes no longer would be “material omissions,” meaning registrars could not deny the application on that basis alone.

Instead, the new form ties those questions into the oath each applicant must sign at the end of the form asserting they meet Virginia’s voting requirements, including U.S. citizenship, age, residency and that they are not prohibited from voting by a felony conviction or legal incapacity.

By signing, the applicant says they understand making a willfully false statement on the form is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $2,500.

“Now, when you sign it, you are directly signing an affirmation that says, ‘Yes, I am a voter,’” said Anna Scholl, ProgressVA’s executive director. “…I think in a lot of ways, that’s stronger than what we have now.”

Scholl said Garrett, whose district includes Amherst and Appomattox counties and part of Lynchburg, is using the issue to his political advantage.

“I think he’s making some wildly baseless accusations in an effort to gin up his base and put up more barriers,” she said in an interview. She said ProgressVA has not found any problems with non-citizen voter fraud.

Garrett pointed to election fraud he prosecuted in Louisa County, although he did not discuss details in the meeting.

“ProgressVA is willfully ignorant of reality in order to advance an agenda,” he said in the interview.

He described two cases in which felons checked boxes illegally, leading to counts of falsifying a public document.

“They checked the box that said, ‘I am not a felon,’” Garrett said in an interview. “Once this goes into effect, I can no longer even charge them for that. That charge goes away because the block goes away.”

Without those boxes, he said it would be “virtually impossible” to prosecute voter fraud. He said attorneys could easily their client didn’t see the signed affirmation at the end of the form.

He referenced a Virginia State Police investigation after the 2008 election that turned up several instances of felon voter fraud, many of which were not prosecuted. He said the problem is not “epidemic,” but that any illegal vote erodes every other.

Lawrence Haake, Chesterfield County registrar, said registrars need an affirmative statement from the voter to check their felon status.

“The registrar of voters has a duty to determine the circumstances under which those rights were restored. You take away that question, you block me from doing my duty,” Haake said, to strong applause.

He said the oath is ineffective compared to the boxes.

“I have had inches-thick stacks of applications where they check ‘no’ to citizen and signed it or where they check ‘yes’ to felon and ‘no’ to rights restoration and signed it,” Haake said. “The signature at the oath doesn’t work. The reality is people don’t read it. Do away with the oath, keep the question, is what I say to you.”

The signature block was moved to the bottom because questions after the signature block are ignored, proponents said. Putting it at the end, they said, indicates finality.

The new form lists Virginia voting requirements at the top, including citizenship, competency and that felons must have had their rights restored to vote.

The lines are spaced more. Some instructions are moved to the back page. The box checking “I am a citizen” is the first question and much higher on the page. Currently, it is the first question, but below many lines of small print.

“We do want to encourage you to remember that registrars are not the only stakeholders in this process, and in fact the larger community of stakeholders are Virginia voters and ensuring that every eligible voter is able to register and participate in the process, and that … a form that is user friendly and eases that interaction for the voter is the top priority here,” Scholl said.

The board already is working with a graphic designer to change the piece of paper to fit current folders at registrars’ request. Other online comments under discussion include adding genders other than male or female. One online comment gave the example of social media site Facebook, which provides more than 50 genders to choose from. The public comment period is open until Aug. 3 at townhall.virginia.gov.