Last year we successfully lobbied the Governor to veto 14 bad election integrity-related bills. I am writing to ask that you help defeat this year’s crop of bad bills from the Legislature.

We know that our veto campaign hurt the Democrats last year, because they have literally copied one of the bills we defeated and submitted it again. Otherwise, they are trying to tie the hands of both the Electoral Board members and the local Registrars from doing anything other than rubber-stamping what Richmond wants.

Please email or call the Governor with this basic message — you can change this to match your personal thoughts but the main thing is to send in your thoughts today or tomorrow. Let’s flood his inbox by Monday! He could act on these bills one way or another at any time between now and March 22nd.

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EXAMPLE Email or letter:

Send to glenn.youngkin@governor.virginia.gov and constituent.services@governor.virginia.gov

OR simply call 804 786-2211 and leave a message. Provide your name and address (at least town) so the Governor knows who you are.

Dear Governor Youngkin,

Thank you for your strong stance in defending election integrity last year by vetoing 14 bills that would have eroded voter confidence in Virginia’s elections. It made a big difference. Unfortunately, the Democratic House and Senate are trying to bring up some of the same issues AND adding harassment of our Electoral Boards and Registrars to the mix.

Please continue to stand for election transparency and integrity by vetoing these bills:

EROSION OF ELECTORAL BOARD AUTHORITY:

1. VETO HB2056 (Reaser): Takes decisions about Days and Hours of Early Voting at Satellite locations away from the local Electoral Boards and gives to City Councils and Board of Supervisors. This clearly sets up a potential conflict of interest for Loudoun’s BOS.
2. VETO HB2668 (Simon): An Electoral Board member can be voted out at any time by State Board of Elections with no appeal possible. Registrar can be voted out by unanimous vote of the local Electoral Board at any time. This bill even removes the Courts from these processes.
3. VETO HB2277 (Price): Fines Electoral Board members $1,000 if they do not certify an election. Thus coercing Electoral Boards to rubber-stamp election results and negating one of the biggest reasons for having impartial Electoral Boards in the first place.

EROSION OF VOTER ROLL CLEANLINESS:

4. VETO HB2276 (Price): This is a copy of 2024 bills HB 904 and SB300 which you vetoed. It removes methods and Deadlines used for Voter List Maintenance and creates a Point system that must be met before a Voter can be removed from the Voter List, potentially increasing the number of illegal voters on Voter Rolls. And sets up new requirements for tracking canceled voters.
   NOTE: It adds more than $100,000 in expenses and makes it more difficult for Registrars to maintain clean voter rolls.
5. VETO HB1657 (Henson) and SB813 (Rouse): Extends no-removal period for ineligible voters to 90 days for all elections (not just Federal). This change combined with the periods of 45 days of early voting during primary and general election season means that the Registrar would be unable to clean voter rolls for a minimum of 270 days out of the year! The bill also doubles the length of time a Registrar has to remove a non-citizen, which is unnecessary.
6. VETO HB2002 (Laufer): Restricts Registrars to only use data from the Department of Elections or a state agency approved to provide such data by the State Board of Elections to cancel the registration of a voter. This artificially restricts the Registrar from performing their duty to keep the voter registration list as clean as possible, by removing the possibility of using such sources as out-of-state obituaries, personal property tax records, etc.
7. VETO HB2746 (Tran): Allows mentally incapacitated people to vote, unless a court makes a finding with clear and convincing evidence, that the person lacks the capacity to understand the act of voting. This adds an unnecessary, extra burden on the courts which will have to take two actions to accomplish what they do with one today.

EROSION OF TIMELINESS OF ELECTIONS

8. VETO SB760 (Favola): Pushes absentee ballot cure deadline from 12pm to 5 p.m., 3 days post-election. This means the final count of votes could not be completed until after 5pm on a Friday, forcing the election office to work the weekend or delaying final election results by 3 days.
9. VETO SB1009 (Salim): Shoring up of Ranked Choice Voting— Makes the State Board of Elections responsible for certifying technology, writing education materials, defining recount and audit processes. These changes are trying to make Ranked Choice Voting more palatable to counties that are balking at using it.
10. 2024-2026 Budget Amendment Line 77, Note F.1 and F.2: Please strike these notes. They are arbitrary and not finance-related to Line 77. It is better not to set a precedent by having this remain in the budget.

These bills stifle initiative to keep our voter rolls clean and our elections fair. We need to move in the direction that President Trump has called for – a single day of voting with paper ballots that are hand counted; not in the direction of a “point validation system” for cleaning the voter rolls or “rank choice voting”.

Please provide our state-wide Election Offices stability so that they can concentrate on the important state-wide office races this year.