Virginia Rising

Virginia Politics
Democrats accuse rogue elections official of compromising voter privacy

By Jenna Portnoy December 1
RICHMOND — Election officials in Prince William County this week asked the Commonwealth’s attorney to investigate one of their own.

They say Guy Anthony Guiffré, a member of the county electoral board, might have broken state and federal laws in his quest to determine whether someone improperly used technology to impersonate voters in last month’s election.

At issue is a state rule that says a voter can apply for an absentee ballot online using an electronic signature instead of the old-fashioned way — with paper and pen.

Guiffré, a Republican, says the system opens the door to fraud. To prove it, he recruited four friends — while the county’s registrar was away — to inspect 151 absentee ballot documents and registration records laden with Social Security numbers and other personal information. In doing so, Democrats say, he compromised the meticulous process used to handle ballots, usurped his authority and violated voter privacy.

“It’s my obligation as an individual electoral board member to make sure if I see something that looks extremely suspicious to do something about it,” he said.

State election officials, the two Democrats on the county’s electoral board and the registrar don’t see it that way.

In a letter last week, the office of Virginia Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortés said that Guiffré’s actions “may constitute serious violations of federal and state law.” County officials were summoned to the state elections board’s next meeting on Dec. 16.

In response, Keith A. Scarborough and Jane M. Reynolds, both members of Prince William’s electoral board, and County Registrar Michele L. White referred the matter to the Commonwealth’s attorney and alerted the state attorney general.

The dispute is the latest episode in a debate that started this summer when House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) set up a secure Web site to make it easier for voters to request absentee ballots electronically.

[Challenger to Va. House speaker accuses him of ‘cheating’ in ballot rules]

The site — which utilized electronic signatures instead of pen and ink — raised the ire of Howell’s primary opponent but didn’t catch fire until Sen.-elect Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) started to have success with a similar Web site.

Going door to door, he claims to have helped 900 voters request absentee ballots, while the Stafford registrar has said Howell’s site yielded just 17 requests. The volume of Prince William applications alerted elections officials — and political operatives.

Bill Card, chairman of the Prince William GOP, said he worried that the technology could have unintended consequences and encourage abuse. He called Surovell’s system “certainly not illegal but unwholesome.”

Surovell called the effort “voter intimidation in its purest form.” “These kinds of tactics are straight out of the Republican National Committee voter-suppression handbook,” he said.

Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, said the integrity of elections depends on voters having confidence in elections officials’ integrity.

“These are serious allegations against an electoral board chair that the Commonwealth’s attorney must investigate in earnest and with greatest transparency,” she said.

In the meantime, Guiffré said he can’t understand what all the fuss is about when he’s simply seeking fairness.

After the Nov. 3 election, he made sure that absentee ballot envelopes were not sealed at the clerk of court’s office, per protocol, and instead kept separate in the county office, according to the state’s letter. About two weeks later, he and four Republicans, whom he had deputized using the same oath poll workers take, went to the office while the registrar was absent — a situation Guiffré calls a coincidence.

The group — who had no training in handwriting analysis — compared the envelopes with registration records and made photocopies. Then, Guiffré said, he told staff that an inch-and-a-half-thick stack of copies could be destroyed.

This isn’t the first time Guiffré, an accountant, has launched his own study. Earlier this year, he said he applied for absentee ballots online no less than four times as a test.

The result? “I found out it works pretty crappy and it needs to be changed,” he said.

Jenna Portnoy covers Virginia politics for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrats-accuse-rogue-elections-official-of-compromising-voter-privacy/2015/12/01/1f763ce4-985b-11e5-b499-76cbec161973_story.html