Editorial: Undermining election trust

Attorney General Jason Miyares last week announced the formation of an “Election Integrity Unit” and Virginians are right to be suspicious.

The commonwealth’s elections have been safe and secure. Cases of election fraud are exceedingly rare. So why would Miyares assign 20 lawyers in his overworked, overstretched staff to a non-existent issue?

Sadly, Virginia knows why. And it’s not to protect the integrity of Virginia elections but quite the opposite.

Miyares announced on Friday the launch of a new unit within his office to “investigate and prosecute violations of Virginia election law, work with the election community throughout the year to ensure uniformity and legality in application of election laws, and work with law enforcement to ensure legality and purity in elections.”

That sounds rather innocuous were it not for similar efforts led by other Republican attorneys general or extremist elections officers who have used such initiatives to undermine elections rather than to foster trust in them.

Around the country, GOP office holders, candidates and party propagandists continue to sow doubt about American elections, using baseless claims about the 2020 presidential vote to advance a false narrative about its trustworthiness. They have no evidence to support these assertions and judges — even those appointed by former President Donald Trump — have thrown out every legal filing related to them. So outlandish are these lawsuits that some of the lawyers responsible for bringing them face disbarment.

Still they persist, seeking to gain or assert control over elections so that they can put their thumbs on the scale in the future. Their intent isn’t election integrity but rather election manipulation. If they win an election, it is a fair and just outcome. If they lose, it can only be due to their opponents’ cheating.

Virginia saw this first hand last year. As the governor’s race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin narrowed in October, state Sen. Amanda Chase, a Youngkin campaign surrogate, claimed during a rally that she had evidence Democrats were working to “steal” the election.

When then-Attorney General Mark Herring asked for evidence of these crimes, Chase could not produce any. Chase later proposed spending $70 million for a bogus “forensic audit” of Virginia’s 2020 election — a bill that thankfully only received four votes (state Sen. Jen Kiggans was one of the four).

That Chase is among those now cheering Miyares’ proposal speaks volumes about its purpose and legitimacy.

Then there is a question of resource allocation. In February, Miyares pleaded with the General Assembly for additional staffing, saying that his office was unable to keep pace with the number of criminal appeals following the jurisdictional expansion of the Virginia Court of Appeals.

At the time, Miyares said he needed another 75 staffers. That it came after the AG fired 30 staff, including 17 lawyers, after taking office only to request money to hire staff surely raised lawmakers’ eyebrows.

But Miyares’ office is now apparently so flush with resources that he can task 20 lawyers to a vanity project to tackle a non-existent problem. That is informative as lawmakers consider future staff and funding requests.

In other states, these sort of election units have focused exclusively on Democratic strongholds and those with high concentrations of minority voters. In the commonwealth, that would mean Richmond, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

It is therefore worth remembering Virginia’s ugly and regrettable history of disenfranchising people of color, using literacy tests, grandfather clauses and poll taxes as well as intimidation, threats and violence to keep minority voters from casting ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the commonwealth’s poll tax only 56 years ago.

That is the backdrop before which this “Election Integrity Unit” comes into view. It is a solution in search of a problem and, rather than inspire confidence in our democratic process, it is far more likely to undermine public conference.

That is cynical. It is wasteful. And it is wrong.