(The Daily Signal)—Virginians should not be giggling over the issues that are dogging California’s primary results—we could be next.

All of the laws regarding mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are in Virginia’s law books, too.

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Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, now president of the Election Transparency Initiative, pointed this out in a visit with me on my radio show (recording attached).

Ken Cuccinelli: “They have ballot harvesting (in California) and by the way, so do we in Virginia. Yeah, I know, it’s horrible. You know, it’s legal in Virginia. [Former Gov. Glenn] Youngkin couldn’t get rid of it because he had a Democrat legislature.”

Joe Thomas: “Yes, so what do we do?”

Ken Cuccinelli: “Well, honestly, that’s a great question, unless we want to start trying to use the federal government to impose rules on states we can’t win, and I wouldn’t recommend that because the other side can do that too; some people say we should do it because they’re going to do it, and I’m not in that camp. I do think we should expose all this.”

So, let’s start with how we got here. During the COVID years, the Northam administration wanted to protect state employees from ‘putting their lives on the line’ by being exposed to the public, so we legislated a 45-day-long early voting period, removed any requirement for a reason to be issued a mail ballot, removed the requirement that you have a witness sign your absentee ballot (which was the last way anyone was caught committing voter fraud in the commonwealth), and allowed ‘volunteers’ to go collect ballots at people’s homes.

The irony is that we didn’t mind putting the state employees of the VABC liquor store at risk by keeping them open every day, but not the election workers.

Aside from that, the obvious problem was violating Virginia’s electioneering protections, as there are no safeguards against partisan campaign staff “helping you vote” at your door. Virginia law requires a 40-foot area around the building used for voting to be free of electioneering, never mind standing right in front of a voter.

Did I mention that the last time someone was convicted of voter fraud in Virginia, it was a Louisa County senior living facility staffer who was caught appearing as the witness on all the residents’ absentee ballots?

COVID was also used to move poll watchers away from the election officials tabulating the dropped-off and mailed-in ballots so they cannot see anything other than whether the officials are opening envelopes and sliding them into scanners.

Democracy works when citizens cast their secret ballots publicly. This is how to protect against coercion and prevent ineligible people from voting.

In California, ballot harvesting was being done on Skid Row among the homeless population because under California law, homeless people can register to vote even though they do not have a fixed residence.

In Virginia, we aren’t there yet.

To register to vote in Virginia, you need to show acceptable forms of identification, which include a current and valid photo ID or a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or government document that shows your name and address. Yes, lots of gray area. Then there is a court ruling this week.

Just Tuesday, a federal judge approved a consent decree requiring Virginia election officials to accept voter registration applications submitted by college students with incomplete address information. The agreement settles a lawsuit that was filed in October by the NAACP and a group called the Advancement Project against Virginia election officials because students’ applications didn’t include campus mailbox numbers.

The judge’s ruling was based on whether the address was necessary to determine what voting precinct they should be assigned to when it should have been about proving whether the student is actually a resident of the state—or any other, for that matter.

Votes are legal documents. It’s why you are supposed to sign when you cast one. However, in this day and age, we have gaslit the public into believing that casting a vote is a right that should not be interfered with—certainly not by anything as arcane as actually being a citizen of the community you are voting in.

Just ask the Republicans who oppose the “SAVE” Act.

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