First, the good news: Senator
Deeds' recounts bill, SB 35,
passed the House Privileges and
Elections subcommittee and the
full committee, and just passed
the full House. The governor
supports the bill. This is a
simple but important bill that
tells election officials that in
the case of an election close
enough to require a recount, the
officials should in fact count
the ballots again; i.e., optical
scan ballots are to be run
through the scanners a second
time. (Of course, there's
nothing you can do to recount a
DRE.) Our coalition was able to
amend this bill in the Senate to
ensure that the scanners went
through a second round of logic
and accuracy testing before
reading the ballots again, so we
have some level of confidence
about the accuracy of the
results.
Now, if you were
from another state, you would
yawn in my face about a recount
that actually recounted ballots,
but this is huge news here in
Virginia, and if you remember my
earlier email, success was very
much in doubt right up to the
moment of the P&E subcommittee
meeting. Call us pathetic, but
we are very excited about this.
Obviously, the
level of confidence would be
even greater if the machines
were actually audited to compare
the machine tallies to a hand
count of a sample of ballots,
and this should apply to all
elections rather than only those
close enough to require a
recount, but we were not
successful in getting that
language passed this year.
However, the stripped-down
version of our
audits bill, Senator
Herring's SB 292, did pass both
Senate and House with a
provision for an optional pilot
program of audits. It sets the
stage for future mandatory
audits if cost and procedural
concerns can get worked out, and
if we aren't all heartily sick
of the subject by then.
In addition, our
bill to improve the
certification process for new
election machines, Senator
Barker's SB 536, has also
passed. Virginia localities will
be buying a lot of new machines
in coming years as they switch
to optical scan, so improving
standards now is important.
Finally, the New
Era bill to add a voter receipt
to registration forms, Senator
Howell's SB 62, passed both
Senate and House without a
dissenting vote but with a
near-fatal detour to
Appropriations, where it was
almost left for good. In fact,
we were given to understand that
it was dead. The coroner's
report proved
premature--fortunately for new
voters, who will now have
evidence of who registered them
and a phone number to check on
their status before they show up
at the polls on election day.
In the loss
column, bipartisan redistricting
takes first place. There was a
lot of media attention and
fanfare accompanying that bill
when it was in the Senate this
year, but the fact was that a
similar bill passed the Senate
last year without a signature
drive and the Chamber of
Commerce endorsement. None of
that means anything as long as
the power to decide the fate of
a bill belongs to three
Republicans on the five-member
House P&E subcommittee on
elections. Next year may be
different; the legislature will
see which way the wind is
blowing after the November
elections, and House Republicans
may decide to join the game if
they think they need to get what
they can while they can. So
watch this space.
The same trio on
the House subcommittee also
killed our bill to allow
in-person absentee voting
without an excuse. When you see
long lines at polling places
this November, part of the
credit must go to Delegates
Jones, O'Bannon and Suit for
killing this popular bill.
Lots of other
interesting and unusual bills
came and went this session.
Placing well in the category of
Bald-Faced Attacks on Democracy
was a bill that would have
disqualified any write-in vote
that misspelled the name of the
candidate. ("Do you know how to
spell my name, Senator?" asked
Chap Petersen of the bill's
patron, and that was pretty much
the end of the bill.) See what
you miss when you only read the
papers?
