FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 3, 2021
Contact: Prudence Robertson, probertson@sbalist.org (240) 672-2828
In January, Governor-elect Youngkin and the Republican House of Delegates Should Immediately Push to Restore Virginia’s Photo I.D. Law—and so Much More
Washington, D.C. – Republican Glenn Youngkin has defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe to become the 74th Governor of Virginia.
The victory was sealed despite Virginia Democrats having systematically eliminated many of the state’s key voter integrity laws, including the state’s photo I.D. law, eroding protections required under statute for decades. In fact, Northam and Virginia Democrats forced at least 70 bills into law since 2020, including 25 changes to existing law, in an unprecedented assault on fair, secure, and transparent elections.
The Washington Post wrote:
“an army of poll watchers — many driven by GOP’s election integrity push,” had been participating as election officials and campaign poll watchers across Virginia during the state’s early voting period.
“Across Virginia, the GOP election integrity push has largely driven the influx of election observers in this year’s gubernatorial race, according to local, state and national Republican officials. In some trainings, prospective poll watchers have been taught to see themselves as a bulwark against election fraud, and some groups have been corralling their own poll watcher armies,” The Post reported.
TIME added that election offices had “been inundated with GOP poll watchers, who signed up in unprecedented numbers this year to observe voting.”
National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued the following statement:
“Elections are setting records for diversity and turnout—never before has it been easier to register and vote than it is today regardless of your race or party affiliation—but that didn’t stop Democrats from doing their best to make it easier to cheat in Virginia. Although they tore down common-sense election safeguards ensuring voter confidence and trust in our elections, thousands of ordinary Virginians dedicated to a fair, secure, and transparent election process proved that they can still make a difference. Make no mistake, even in the absence of effective voter integrity laws in VA and elsewhere, concerned citizens can and should mobilize as election officials and poll watchers to help ensure free and fair elections in their own states.
“We urge Governor-elect Youngkin and the incoming Republican majority in the House of Delegates to begin immediate preparations to restore Virginia’s photo I.D. law and reverse the Democrat-inflicted damage to voter integrity in our state.”
An exit poll of Virginia voters conducted by pollster Scott Rasmussen found that 81% of Virginia voters believe photo I.D. should be required for voting, including 94% of Youngkin voters and 66% of McAuliffe voters.
Since April 2020, Governor Ralph Northam signed legislation repealing Virginia’s photo I.D. law, legalizing unsecure and unverifiable absentee voting practices, allowing automatic registration for individuals accessing DMV services, and requiring the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots and other measures undermining election safeguards used to ensure the integrity of Virginia’s elections.
Under the guise of the decades-old Democrat-contrived myth of “voter suppression,” Northam circumvented the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which held the pre-clearance provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as applied to particular states of concern to be unconstitutional, by signing partisan legislation requiring that localities receive pre-clearance from the attorney general’s office before making any voting changes and allowing the attorney general to file suit, imposing heavy restrictions and mandates on localities and subjecting them to frivolous lawsuits should they attempt to change their election rules. Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2013 that “There is no denying…the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.” As such, the new law signifies a radical takeover of elections by re-applying a form of pre-clearance in Virginia.
What do real “voter suppression” laws look like? The 1902 Virginia Constitution imposed poll taxes, literacy tests and even a civics test as hurdles to voter registration and voting, all intended to deny as many black citizens access to voting as possible. That same constitution also employed devices to allow illiterate whites onto the voter rolls. These included “going easy” on the civics tests for prospective white voters who could not read, as well as so-called “grandfather clauses,” by which illiterate whites whose father or grandfather fought for either the union or confederacy (virtually always the Confederacy) would also be admitted to register to vote.
Georgia’s 1958 civics test was used to bar black citizens from voting, but it was not only southern states discriminating against voters. California, Connecticut, Delaware, and more also have had constitutional and/or statutory provisions to impede minority voting.
- Read more about Democrats’ “voter suppression” myth being used to justify giving unelected federal bureaucrats ‘veto’ authority over state-passed election laws in Mr. Cuccinelli’s op-ed Fox News: “Democrats’ election takeover – here’s what’s at stake for every state.”
- Read more about Democrat’s partisan, politically-driven attempt to force a federal takeover of elections into law in Mr. Cuccinelli’s op-ed for The Exponent-Telegram: “Dems make it impossible for Sen. Manchin to support H.R. 4.”
Polling shows the majority of U.S. voters, including Black and Hispanic as well as urban and independent voters, overwhelmingly support voter I.D. protections and want it to be easy to vote and hard to cheat.
The Election Transparency Initiative, a partnership between American Principles Project (APP) and the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), was organized to combat H.R. 1/S. 1 and advocate for state-based election reforms that voters can trust.
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