Voter fraud isn’t some abstract concept, it happens and it's against state law. Election-related crimes can take a number of forms and have long been enforced across Virginia.
Through an extensive data request, Radio IQ found out just what those crimes look like.
The oldest case found started in 2003 and involved a state senate candidate in Loudoun County accused of misstatements on campaign finance forms. Of the seven original charges, only one survived— willfully failing to file an election report.
Another former state senate candidate in Prince William County in 2005 was accused of failing to adhere to residency requirements. One of his two charges were marked as resolved and the other was dropped by prosecutors.
In 2019 a national voter registration organizer was busted for turning in false registrations. She was found guilty on all counts.
The 680 charges of election fraud included in state court records since 2004 and reviewed by Radio IQ, were against 283 individuals from Accomack to Wythe counties— and across party lines. Not all records were available, including those from Fairfax County because it's not included in the Supreme Court of Virginia’s database.
But the available data shows how enforcement of these laws plays out even as groups claim Virginia and other states are failing to act upon them.
According to the data, about half of the nearly 700 charges ended with guilty verdicts. The rest were not guilty, resolved, or abandoned by prosecutors.
Hans von Spakovsky runs the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative. He is among critics who claim election laws are underenforced at the state and federal level.
“I found they don’t want to enforce the laws against alien voting," he said. "
"They have this attitude that there's nothing wrong with them doing it despite the fact that it's against the law and they’re just not interested.”
Spakovsky has tracked hundreds of cases of voter fraud across the country for Heritage, and he pointed to data from the Public Interest Legal Foundation which he says showed thousands of non-citizen voters who could have participated in Virginia elections. And, best Spakovsky can tell, they never referred to local authorities.
“This problem is just ignored,” he said.
Records reviewed by Radio IQ shows Virginia State Police, the Virginia Attorney General’s office as well as local authorities play a part in such investigations. In a statement, a VSP spokesperson said election-related complaints are referred to their General Investigation Section agents, adding “complaints can come from anywhere, from the public, a registrar, a Commonwealth's Attorney, etc.”
In a statement the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys said their members review the results of those investigations and “determine whether charging is appropriate.”
Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi has been a prosecutor there for over a decade and used to run its election investigation unit. He couldn’t speak to all 126 charges Radio IQ’s data request found in Norfolk, but he said they were most often felons who mistakenly registered to vote.
“The fact that there are voter fraud cases in Virginia means the system is working and we can have confidence in the results,” Fatehi said.
Recent accusations of non-citizen voting in Virginia provides a unique example of why election crimes are less often the subject of investigation.
Fairfax County’s registrar flagged nearly 800 alleged non-citizen registrations to their local commonwealth’s attorney, Steve Descanso, earlier this month. In a memo, Descanso said failing to respond to a request from the registrar’s office— the basis of having an alleged non-citizen removed from the rolls— does not constitute a crime. And, as discussed in earlier reporting, finding willful intent to defraud is just as challenging to prove.
This breakdown between political expectations of what voter fraud is and what’s actually grounds for prosecution leaves some gray areas. But Fatehi doesn’t think it shows thousands of noncitizens are illegally voting.
“We would address the crimes depending on what the crimes were and who the people were,” Fatehi told Radio IQ.
Notably Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares targeted election related crimes early in his term by creating an Election Integrity Unity. The sole prosecution it undertook involved claims against a Prince William County registrar that were later dropped. She’s now suing the AG for malicious prosecution.
The Election Integrity Unit has referred a few other cases to local prosecutors, but Miyares office wouldn’t elaborate on the unit’s work or current investigations. Nor would Miyares’s office comment on those 800 Fairfax County registrations that were also handed over to the AG’s office.
Still a light touch on election crimes can come from both sides of the judicial system.
Last year a Nelson County man voted early and then tried to vote a second time in person at his local precinct. Charges were brought, and a trial was held. Just this week he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers after he argued was trying to test the system.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
