2 Election Officials in a Rural Virginia City Sue the State Over Ballot-Counting Machines

RICHMOND (AP) — Two Republican election officials have initiated a lawsuit, asserting that they will not certify the results of the upcoming November 5 election in a rural Virginia city unless all ballots are manually counted. This move continues to propagate the erroneous belief that voting machines can be tampered with during the vote tallying process.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Waynesboro, Virginia, targets the Virginia Department of Elections and the Elections Board and is led by the city’s electoral board chair, Curtis Lilly, alongside vice chair, Scott Mares. In their legal complaint, Lilly and Mares contend that election officials lack access to the results produced by the tallying machines, which they claim hinders their ability to verify the “results of the voting machine’s secret canvass.”

The plaintiffs further argue that the current counting system infringes upon a provision in the state Constitution, which requires that such machines be visible to the public during the voting process.

“As Electoral Board members are prohibited from hand-counting ballots, we cannot ensure that the vote tally produced by the voting machines matches the votes memorialized on the case paper ballots,” Mares stated in an affidavit.

The complaint has been lodged with the Waynesboro District Court. Meanwhile, the Office of the Attorney General, which is defending the Department of Elections and the State Board of Elections, has opted not to comment on the ongoing litigation.

This lawsuit arrives amidst a broader trend across the United States in which election conspiracy advocates are increasingly advocating for hand-counted ballots. This push has gained momentum nearly four years after former President Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, that the election he lost was fraudulent. However, research indicates that hand-counting is not only more susceptible to errors but also comes with higher costs and could delay election results.

In Virginia, voters utilize paper ballots which are then counted electronically. In August, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order requiring that voting machines undergo testing before each election while ensuring that they are never connected to the internet. Youngkin’s order also mandated that election officials provide daily updates to voter rolls to exclude ineligible voters. This move has drawn scrutiny, as the U.S. Justice Department claims it violates federal law.

“The Virginia model for Election Security works,” Youngkin stated in a public announcement in August. “This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue; it’s an American and Virginian issue.”

This developing legal situation highlights the ongoing debate surrounding election integrity and the methods in which votes are counted in Virginia and beyond. The reliance on technology in elections versus hand-counting ballots continues to spark discussions on transparency and trust in the electoral process.

As the election date approaches, the implications of this lawsuit are sure to generate considerable interest and debate among officials and voters alike in Virginia and across the nation.