The chairs of the Prince William County Democrat executive board and Republican committee have reportedly agreed on how to address voter integrity concerns that were brought to light last week on Twitter.
“We had people who were working in the Central Absentee Precinct (CAP) 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,'” said Denny Daugherty, chair of the Prince William County GOP Committee.
The change was in response to former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli’s allegations of impropriety in a two-part tweet on Oct. 28.
“My Democratic counterpart, Tonya James, and I corresponded with the registrar, alerting him 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 told The Epoch Times.
James, chair of the Prince William County Democratic executive board, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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.
“In meeting this requirement, the second seal on some of the ballot envelopes inadvertently came open because the adhesive had an issue,” said county director of elections Eric Olsen.
“During the processing of ballots, this was brought to my attention, and I stopped the processing of any of these ballots to examine the issue.”
Cuccinelli, who was Virginia’s attorney general from 2010 to 2014, alleged on Twitter that county registrar workers 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.
“This is a fixable problem,” Cuccinelli tweeted. “If confronted. I’m sure this will be discussed further tomorrow. Where else in Virginia is this happening?”
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.”
Clara Bell Wheeler, a senior fellow with the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, blamed changes in the one-envelope method of mailing absentee ballots.
“Now, when the registrar’s office opens the outside mailing envelope, which is all one piece of paper, they are also sometimes opening the inner seal of the bottom one-third of that piece of paper where the pocket is that contains the ballot,” Wheeler told the Epoch Times.
“That’s when the security envelope containing the ballot has been breached.”
Previously, the registrar’s office distributed a two-envelope mail-in ballot, according to Wheeler.
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