MANASSAS, Va. (Legal Newsline) - The chairs of the Prince William County Democrat and Republican parties have agreed on how to address concerns that were raised ahead of the election over the integrity of mail-in ballots.
As previously reported, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli alleged that Prince William County Registrar employees were opening mail-in ballot envelopes, which exposed voters' ballots and had asked partisan election officials to certify that the exposed ballots weren’t spoiled.
Cuccinelli currently leads the Election Transparency Institute, based in Arlington.
“This is a fixable problem,” Cuccinelli tweeted on Oct. 28. “If confronted, I'm sure this will be discussed further tomorrow (now today/Thursday). Where else in Virginia is this happening?”
In response, Denny Daugherty, chair of the Prince William County GOP Committee, corresponded with the Registrar’s office.
“My Democratic counterpart and I alerted them to the need to comply with the requirements that election officers would be present when ballots were opened and volunteering who would represent us in that process and he agreed to do so,” Daugherty said.
Chair of the Prince William County Democratic Executive Board Tonya James has not responded to requests for comment.
“We had people who were working in the Central Absentee Precinct where these issues were noticed and now we have a specific individual assigned, one from each party, who is taking part in the initial receipt of the mail for a so-called ‘purer process,'” Daugherty added.
Election officers are required to be involved in the process of determining whether the ballots are to be counted or not, which means they should be present when the ballot envelope is opened, according to Daugherty.
“Unfortunately, some of these weren’t,” he said. “Any number of things could have happened. That's not to say that they have or did, but the process is there just to make sure that they don’t.”
Under Virginia Code 24.2-709.1, the registrar’s office is required to mark the date received and examine the ballot envelope to verify the required information has been provided. However, circumstances that prevent compliance with the officers unsealing the envelope are not grounds for contesting the election and do not invalidate the absentee ballots, according to Eric Olsen, director of Elections/General Registrar in the Prince William County Office of Elections.
"We modified our envelope opening process and cut the number of issues in half," Olsen told Legal Newsline. "We also implemented observers from both parties for the opening of all mail so the process could be monitored. We will work with the contractor to modify the seal(s) and/or the envelope(s) to resolve this issue in the future."