Virginia regularly conducts mathematical audits of its elections to ensure there were no major malfunctions in the ballots or the machines that scan and tabulate them.
Audit of the state’s 2020 presidential election Confirmed President Joe Biden’s lopsided victory over former President Donald Trump in Virginia has almost complete statistical certainty. But under new language included in the budget bill passed by the Democratic General Assembly, there will be no such audit in the 2024 presidential election.
Audit overwhelmingly confirms Virginia election results
Although the term “audit” is often used by conservative activists to mean an intensive investigation into questionable results, state law requires “risk-limiting audits” to verify the accuracy of voting equipment for some elections. ” is required to be carried out. The process involves hand-counting only enough ballots to have “strong statistical evidence that the reported results are correct.” virginia state law.
Rep. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, said the budget language makes clear the 2022 bill’s intent to tweak the process and ensure that Virginia’s ability to certify presidential results according to the federal Electoral College schedule will be hampered by the audit. He said he would guarantee that it would not happen.
“People are worried about what excuse someone will come up with for not certifying the election,” Sickles said in an interview. “After what happened last time, people are kind of more sensitive about what they can use to tie a lawsuit.”
The approved budget amendment states that “no audit shall be conducted that limits the risk of presidential elections or presidential nomination elections.”
Previous information The Virginia Department of Elections has indicated that a statewide audit of either the presidential election or the Virginia Senate race will be conducted in 2024.
If the budget proposal stands, election officials would likely audit the race between Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine and his upcoming Republican challenger, as well as randomly selected U.S. House races. will be done. .
State law does not require risk-limiting audits of presidential elections, leaving it to the discretion of state election officials to choose which elections to audit. Applying this process to statewide elections could help officials comply with rules that require all local election offices to participate in audits “at least once every five years.”
The audit of Virginia’s 2020 presidential election results occurred after the results were certified and did not affect Virginia’s ability to officially report Biden’s victory. The big difference is that the 2022 law requires an audit to be completed before results can be certified.
Tram Nguyen, a voting rights activist with New Virginia’s Left Majority, said the budget item would ensure the audit process doesn’t “ultimately mess up the president’s schedule.”
“I think audits are great because they limit risk,” Nguyen said. “They are best practices across the country.”
The budget item dealing with audits also extends the post-election timeline for local election boards to certify results. The bill gives officials 10 days, three days longer than current law, to confirm the validity of outstanding ballots and verify local results with states.
The two Republicans who signed the budget bill, Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) and Sen. Todd Pillion (R-Abingdon), wrote in writing that they opposed the amendments dealing with elections. Mr. McDougle and his efforts to lobby Senate Republicans were unsuccessful.
The budget is currently being considered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who said the audit will focus on “election integrity” during the 2021 campaign.Former Governor Terry McAuliffe attacked In his position, Youngkin said the focus on audits is a nod to conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Youngkin maintained that he was simply supporting the standard, risk-limiting audits that Virginia conducts. Required from 2018.
In a statement Wednesday, Youngkin’s office said it was reviewing the budget, but stressed that Youngkin “has been committed to restoring confidence in Virginia’s elections and improving the voting process.”
“That means leveraging every tool at our disposal to ensure the integrity of our elections,” Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez said.
Despite persistent Republican criticism that Virginia’s election system is not secure enough, there have been no instances of large-scale voter fraud in recent years.
Officials say errors in 2020 Prince William County election gave Trump an advantage
But in the 2020 election; Severe counting error In Prince William County, Mr. Trump received 2,327 more votes than he should have received, subtracting 1,648 votes from Mr. Biden’s total.
Officials say this was not enough to change the outcome of the race, but some see it as an alarming example of election errors not being detected until long after the erroneous vote totals were certified. there were. It wasn’t until this year that Prince William officials revealed the full extent of the problem, with the delay largely due to the criminal prosecution of a former county election official, which all ended. charges have been dropped.
Virginia has a different procedure for recounting close races when ballot fraud could significantly affect the outcome of an election. A court-supervised recount can only be carried out if the election is decided by less than 1% of the total votes cast between the winner and runner-up.
The recount process primarily involves manually counting votes that cannot be read by scanning machines and relying on courts to resolve disputes over whether a particular candidate’s ballots can or cannot be counted. .
