Virginia: Republicans Jockey for Safe Seats In Virginia Redistricting | Roll Call

Virginia Democrats say their congressional map can’t get any worse. In a state President Barack Obama carried twice, their party holds just three seats in the 11-member delegation. With a new round of redistricting coming up next month, the question now is which districts get rougher for Republicans. A federal district court has given Virginia until Sept. 1 to redraw the lines of Democratic Rep. Robert C. Scott’s 3rd District, which it has twice ruled is unconstitutionally packed with blacks. The district runs along the James River between Richmond and Hampton Roads and is currently 57 percent black, according to 2013 census data. Democrats expect to pick up at least one seat from a wider distribution of black voters, which means one of the eight Republicans may be in for a tougher re-election.

Virginia: Morrissey maneuvering leaves $134K tab for two special elections| Richmond Times-Dispatch

The two special elections held after the political jockeying of former Del. Joseph D. Morrissey have cost taxpayers about $134,000, according to estimates provided by local elections officials. Voters in the 74th House District — which covers Charles City County and parts of Henrico County and Richmond — have gone to the polls twice in seven months as Morrissey battled to keep his seat while serving a jail sentence and, after winning, gave up his seat to run for the state Senate. Henrico, where most of the district’s voters reside, spent about $116,000. That includes $53,000 for the January special election and $63,000 for Tuesday’s special election, which Democrat Lamont Bagby won in a lopsided contest against independent David M. Lambert.

Virginia: What might a redistricting special session mean? | Richmond Times-Dispatch

A special session to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts could give Gov. Terry McAuliffe the power to hold out for a new map that turns at least one additional seat to the Democrats. McAuliffe plans to call an Aug. 17 special session to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts by Sept. 1 to comply with an order by federal judges who say legislators packed too many blacks into the 3rd District. “The governor has a lot of leverage here,” said Robert D. Holsworth, a former professor and dean at Virginia Commonwealth University who led then-Gov. Bob McDonnell’s redistricting advisory panel in 2011. “The real issue is how much sacrifice he will exact from the Republicans.”

Virginia: McAuliffe plans Aug. 17 special session to redraw congressional map | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Gov. Terry McAuliffe is calling an Aug. 17 special session of the General Assembly to comply with a court order that legislators redraw the state’s congressional map by Sept. 1. “This special session is an opportunity to work together to fix Virginia’s congressional district lines so that politicians do not have a greater say in who represents Virginians than voters do,” McAuliffe said in a statement Tuesday. “I look forward to working in a bipartisan way to meet the court’s mandate to pass a fair and equitable map by the court’s deadline.”

Virginia: Defense says partisan politics, not race, drove redistricting | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Lawyers for House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell are making a surprising argument to defend against an accusation of racial gerrymandering: Raw, partisan politics targeting Democrats fueled the 2011 redistricting process as much as race. A trial began Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on the constitutionality of Virginia’s most recent drawing of legislative boundaries in the House of Delegates. The lawsuit alleges the redistricting plan illegally packs African-American voters into 12 legislative districts. As a result, according to the suit, black voters’ influence in the remaining 88 districts is diminished. A panel of three federal judges is overseeing the trial and must decide whether race was the overriding factor in drawing the lines. Such a finding would increase the chances that the boundaries would be found unconstitutional. If, on the other hand, the judges decide that race was just one of many factors that went into the redistricting, it is more likely that the boundaries would pass muster.

Virginia: GOP Delegate Jones defends 2011 House redistricting | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The chief architect of a Republican legislative redistricting plan said Wednesday that race was just one of many factors used to redraw boundaries in Virginia’s House of Delegates, disputing claims that the redistricting sought at all costs to pack black voters into a dozen districts. Del. S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, testified in front of a three-judge panel overseeing the redistricting trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The GOP-controlled House of Delegates is defending itself against a civil lawsuit alleging that the 2011 redistricting unconstitutionally crowded black voters into 12 districts, limiting their influence in the rest of the state.

Virginia: Now comes the fight to make Virginia’s primary ballot | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Now that Virginia is set for a March 1 presidential primary, a new scramble starts — to qualify for the ballot in this vital swing state. Newly official presidential candidates Jim Webb and Chris Christie and the 20 other 2016 hopefuls will have to amass 5,000 valid signatures — at least 200 in each of the state’s 11 congressional districts — to make the Virginia ballot. State lawmakers cut the signature requirement in half after the 2012 debacle in which only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas qualified for Virginia’s Republican primary.

Virginia: McAuliffe announces reforms to restoration of rights process | Greene County Record

Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced late last month two changes to the restoration of rights process, representing the latest steps in pursuit of his priority to ensure all Virginians have the opportunity to exercise their voting and civil rights. Under the new reform, outstanding court costs and fees will no longer prohibit an individual from having his or her rights restored. “We have forced these men and women to battle a complicated and bewildering tangle of red tape to reach the voting booth, and too often we still turn them away,” McAuliffe said. “These men and women will still be required to pay their costs and fees, but their court debts will no longer serve as a financial barrier to voting, just as poll taxes did for so many years in Virginia.”

Virginia: Head of troubled Fairfax elections office steps down | The Washington Post

The head of Fairfax County’s busy elections office is stepping down after four years of low employee morale and external criticism of a department that manages registration and ballots for an electorate of 700,000 voters. Cameron Quinn, whose four-year term expires Wednesday, submitted a letter to the county’s Electoral Board on Monday evening asking that she not be reappointed. Quinn, who took over Virginia’s busiest elections office in 2011, cited health problems and the stress of overseeing an office that coordinates elections in 241 precincts — pressure that is bound to increase during the 2016 presidential elections.

Virginia: Republican operative sentenced to 2 years in landmark election case | The Washington Post

A former Republican political operative convicted in the first federal criminal case of illegal coordination between a campaign and a purportedly independent ally was sentenced Friday to two years in prison — a lighter punishment than prosecutors sought but one that still served as a sharp warning. Under questioning from U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady, Tyler Harber said: “I’m guilty of this. I knew it was wrong when I did it.” But Harber said he was not motivated by greed or a lust for power — he simply wanted to win an election and believed that what he was doing was a common, if illegal, practice. “I got caught up in what politics has become,” said Harber, 34, a resident of Alexandria. The watershed prosecution comes as super PACs are playing increasingly prominent roles in national politics.

Virginia: The Latest Front in Democrats’ Voting Rights Battle | New York Times

Democrats allied with Hillary Rodham Clinton have filed a voting rights lawsuit in Virginia, the third time they have done so in a crucial presidential battleground state in the last two months. The suit, like the others, was filed by Marc Elias, a Democratic election lawyer whose clients include Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign and four of the party’s major national committees. Mrs. Clinton is not a party to any of the lawsuits, but her campaign aides have expressed supported for the two earlier suits, in Ohio and Wisconsin. The Virginia lawsuit is part of a broader effort by Democrats to try to roll back voting laws that have been passed in nearly two dozen states since 2010. Many of the laws were passed in states where Republican governors and legislatures rose to power after the Tea Party wave.

Virginia: GOP ponders: Primary or convention in 2016 presidential race | Daily Press

Virginia Republican Party leaders will gather later this month to decide whether to hold a presidential primary next year. Based on the past positions of the party’s State Central Committee, which will make the decision, a nominating convention seems more likely, party insiders said Wednesday. This is an ongoing struggle in the Republican Party of Virginia, but it takes on wider significance going into a presidential election year. The party’s right wing generally prefers conventions, figuring the dedicated folks willing to spend all Saturday in a political meeting will pick more conservative nominees. Others push for primaries, arguing that they help widen the party’s tent and juice the Republican ground game as GOP candidates traipse through the state and campaign volunteers collect voter information well ahead of general elections.

Virginia: Another lawsuit coming in redistricting fight | Daily Press

Virginia’s General Assembly districts, already under attack from a federal lawsuit, will face a new challenge in coming months: A lawsuit in the state courts questioning their fitness under the state constitution. The federal challenge alleges that the assembly’s Republican majority packed minority voters into a handful of districts to dilute their strength – and boost GOP fortunes – in neighboring ones. This new suit will focus instead on the idea of compactness. Like many modern-day districts, a number of Virginia House and Senate districts stretch into amoeba-like ink blots as they meander across the map, picking up known pockets of Republican or Democratic voters.

Virginia: Why the fate of Virginia’s congressional map matters | MSNBC

When voters in Virginia went to the polls in 2012, a narrow majority backed President Obama’s re-election bid, just as they’d done four years earlier. In a closely watched U.S. Senate race, the commonwealth’s voters also elected Sen. Tim Kaine (D) over former Sen. George Allen (R) by about six points. But just a little further down on the ballot is where things get tricky. If you add up all the votes case in each of Virginia’s U.S. House races, roughly 49% of Virginians voted for Democratic candidates, while about 51% supported Republican candidates. The state has 11 congressional districts, so if there was some kind of parallel between voter preferences and partisan results, we might expect to see five Democrats head to Congress from the state, along with six Republicans.

Virginia: District Court Strikes Down Virginia Congressional Maps | National Journal

A federal court ruled Friday that Virginia legislators will have to redraw the state’s congressional lines after misinterpreting Voting Rights Act requirements, but an attorney for the defendants said it’s likely that they’ll appeal to the Supreme Court. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled for the second time that legislators unnecessarily “packed” African-American voters into certain congressional districts, ostensibly to follow a requirement that minority voters maintain their control of certain districts—but also limiting their ability to affect other districts’ elections. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the Republican-controlled legislature had packed an excessive number of minorities into a single district, represented by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, when it drew the congressional map in 2012.

Virginia: Challenger to House speaker suffers setback over absentee ballots | The Washington Post

The Republican challenger to Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell on Thursday suffered a setback in her effort to reverse what she says is a change in absentee-ballot rules that gives the incumbent an unfair advantage in next week’s primary. A judge in Stafford County denied Susan Stimpson’s petition for an emergency injunction that would have made it more difficult for Howell and other candidates to collect absentee ballot requests electronically. Stimpson, 43, is taking on Howell, 72, in a race to represent a district including Stafford and Fredericksburg. Howell has been in office for 28 years and at one time helped Stimpson win a seat on the county board of supervisors.

Virginia: Federal judges again strike down Virginia redistricting plan | Associated Press

A federal court on Friday concluded for the second time that Virginia’s congressional boundaries are unconstitutional because state lawmakers packed black voters into one district in order to make adjacent districts safer for Republican incumbents. In a 2-1 ruling, a judicial panel ordered the General Assembly to draw new boundaries by Sept. 1 to correct the flawed 2012 redistricting plan. The court first struck down the plan in October, but the U.S. Supreme Court ordered reconsideration in light of a ruling in an Alabama redistricting case.The judges in Virginia again ruled that race was the predominant factor — not just one of many considerations — in crafting the plan, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Virginia: House of Delegates Must Turn Over Redistricting Docs | Courthouse News Service

The Virginia House of Delegates must produce the majority of documents sought by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit claiming a 2011 redistricting plan was crafted to disenfranchise black voters, a federal judge ruled.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Payne’s May 26 ruling was a victory for the 12 plaintiffs who claim “bizarrely-shaped” house voting districts included in the plan were drafted based on a “purely racial classification of voters” that was both arbitrary and unconstitutional. Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell denied the allegations intervened in the case to argue that documents requested by the plaintiffs to bolster their case are protected by legislative and attorney-client privilege.

Virginia: Challenger to House speaker sues state over absentee ballot issue | The Washington Post

The Republican challenger to Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell on Wednesday sued the state over what she says is a change in absentee-ballot rules that gives the speaker an unfair advantage ahead of next month’s primary. Susan Stimpson, a former Stafford County supervisor and onetime Howell protege, filed suit in Stafford County Circuit Court against the state Board of Elections. The lawsuit is part of a bitter Republican primary contest between Howell, a 28-year incumbent, and Stimpson in the Fredericksburg-area district. She has accused Howell of favoring tax-and-spend policies out of line with conservative principles, while he has trumpeted his connection to the district and leadership of the Republican House supermajority.

Virginia: Voting machine replacement squeezes local budgets |The News & Advance

Facing a new state mandate, Appomattox County is preparing to replace its voting machines, but hopes to spread out the cost and minimize the unexpected hit to its budget. Appomattox and 29 other localities — including Lynchburg and Nelson County — have to replace their touchscreen voting machines this year after the model was decertified by the State Board of Elections. The decertification decision, made last month amid growing concerns about security flaws in the wireless machines, caught local election officials by surprise. But after meeting with state officials for more detailed briefings on the concerns, local officials said they understand and support the decision. “I feel like the State Board of Elections answered the questions we had, and they chose the right path,” said Mary Turner, secretary of the Appomattox County Electoral Board.

Virginia: Stimpson to file suit against ‘unfair’ absentee ballot process | Fredericksburg.com

The testy race for the 28th District House seat’s Republican primary nomination is about to get a little more heated. Susan Stimpson plans to file a lawsuit in Stafford County Circuit Court on Wednesday to block an absentee voter application process she claims gives her opponent, House Speaker Bill Howell, an unfair advantage in the race. “I am filing this lawsuit … on the principle of it,” she said Tuesday. “There’s no other path.” The lawsuit, prepared by Lynchburg attorney Rick Boyer, states that the state Board of Elections “acted arbitrarily and capriciously,” overstepped its authority and “took the regulatory action without meeting any of the notice requirements imposed by the Virginia Administrative Code.” The lawsuit adds that the board’s “action enabled Howell to plan, create, and produce a website dedicated to generating absentee ballot applications with electronic signatures.”

Virginia: Redistricting lawsuits could cost taxpayers big bucks | The Washington Post

Virginia taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $309,000 in legal fees racked up by Republican lawmakers in lawsuits over the makeup of the state’s congressional and House of Delegates districts. Two lawsuits funded by a national Democratic group argue that the maps must be redrawn because they illegally concentrate African American voters into some districts to reduce their influence elsewhere. One lawsuit could go to trial this summer; the other is awaiting court action. House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) hired E. Mark Braden, a former chief counsel to the Republican National Committee who is now with the firm BakerHostetler, to represent the House of Delegates in both cases.

Virginia: 2 GOP Lawmakers Help McAuliffe Kill Voter ID Bill | Roanoke Star

Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s veto of a photo identification bill was upheld by two Republican lawmakers who maintained that the election measure was flawed. Siding with a solid bloc of Democrats, Delegate Bob Bloxom Jr. left Republicans one vote short of overriding the governor. The freshman lawmaker said requiring that mail-in requests for an absentee ballot be accompanied by a copy of the voter’s photo “wouldn’t solve anything.” Delegate James Edmunds, R-Halifax, also bolted from the party line. “A picture of someone’s photo doesn’t get compared with anything (at the election office.) It could be a picture of anyone,” Bloxom, of Mappsville, told Watchdog.org. McAuliffe made much the same argument.

Virginia: Evidence fight points to secret redistricting talks in Virginia | Daily Press

Virginia House Republicans are fighting to keep hundreds of pages of documents secret as attorneys for Democratic groups push for full access, hoping to find something useful in an ongoing lawsuit over state election maps. The lawsuit targets 12 districts in the House of Delegates, and it follows the same argument that invalidated Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District earlier this year: That the General Assembly’s Republican majority focused on race as it drew maps, packing minority voters into a handful of districts and diluting their voting power in neighboring ones.

Virginia: Henrico to spend $1.2 million to replace outdated voting equipment | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Henrico County has agreed to pay $1.2 million to buy new voting equipment after state authorities decided hundreds of machines the county already owns are no longer fit for use. Registrar Mark J. Coakley announced the purchase to the county’s Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting. The State Board of Elections voted earlier this month to disallow the use of WinVote touch-screen voting machines due to security concerns. Henrico owned about 800 of the machines and only a handful of others. The county will replace the touch-screen machines with optical scan devices. To use the new machines, voters will fill out paper ballots, then feed them into the machines.

Virginia: Roanoke County, Botetourt County, Montgomery County to replace banned voting machines by June | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The decision by the State Board of Elections to scrap thousands of touchscreen voting machines used in 20 percent of the state’s precincts sent shock waves through Virginia’s community of voter registrars, forcing them to scramble and replace the faulty equipment less than two months ahead of the June 9 primaries. The board on Tuesday imposed a ban on all touchscreen direct recording electronic voting machines of the WinVote model, because the continuing use of the aging devices “creates an unacceptable risk to the integrity of the election process in the commonwealth,” said Edgardo Cortés, commissioner of the state Department of Elections. A review by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency after the Nov. 4 elections had confirmed what computer experts had feared for years — that the WinVote machines may be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Virginia is the only state where WinVote devices are still in use.

Virginia: Board of Elections votes to decertify AVS WINVote | The Washington Post

The Virginia Board of Elections on Tuesday voted to scrap a type of voting machine used by dozens of local governments, including Fairfax City and Arlington County, after identifying security concerns. The move leaves 30 counties and cities scrambling to replace hundreds of voting machines. Ten of those local governments have primary elections scheduled for June 9. During a public meeting, the Board of Elections voted 2 to 0, with one member absent, to decertify WINVote touchscreen voting machines. Edgardo Cortés, commissioner of the state Department of Elections, said continuing to use the aging machines “creates an unacceptable risk to the integrity of the election process in the commonwealth.”

Verified Voting in the News: Voting machine password hacks as easy as ‘abcde’, details Virginia state report | Guardian

Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002 and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to a state report. The AVS WinVote machines, used in three presidential elections in Virginia, “would get an F-minus” in security, according to a computer scientist at tech research group SRI International who had pushed for a formal inquiry by the state of Virginia for close to a decade. In a damning study published Tuesday, the Virginia Information Technology Agency and outside contractor Pro V&V found numerous flaws in the system, which had also been used in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. Jeremy Epstein, of the Menlo Park, California, nonprofit SRI International, served on a Virginia state legislative commission investigating the voting machines in 2008. He has been trying to get them decertified ever since.

Verified Voting in the News: Hacked Touchscreen Voting Machine Raises Questions About Election Security | NPR

Computer security experts have warned for years that some voting machines are vulnerable to attack. And this week, in Virginia, the state Board of Elections decided to impose an immediate ban on touchscreen voting machines used in 20 percent of the state’s precincts, because of newly discovered security concerns. The problems emerged on Election Day last November in Spotsylvania County. The AVS WINVote touchscreen machines used in precinct 302 began to shut down. “One machine would go and crash. They’d bring it back up. Another one would crash,” said Edgardo Cortes, the state’s elections commissioner. “Starting in the early afternoon, they brought in a piece of replacement equipment that experienced the same issues when they set it up in the precinct.” Cortes added that elections workers had a theory about what had caused the problem. “There was some interference,” he said, “potentially from a wireless signal from an election officer [who] was streaming music on their phone.”

Verified Voting in the News: Meet the e-voting machine so easy to hack, it will take your breath away | Ars Technica

Virginia election officials have decertified an electronic voting system after determining that it was possible for even unskilled people to surreptitiously hack into it and tamper with vote counts. The AVS WINVote, made by Advanced Voting Solutions, passed necessary voting systems standards and has been used in Virginia and, until recently, in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. It used the easy-to-crack passwords of “admin,” “abcde,” and “shoup” to lock down its Windows administrator account, Wi-Fi network, and voting results database respectively, according to a scathing security review published Tuesday by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. The agency conducted the audit after one Virginia precinct reported that some of the devices displayed errors that interfered with vote counting during last November’s elections.