Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Oops! Look What We Just Found!

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by

Dick Hall-Sizemore
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Susan Beals, Commissioner of Elections Photo credit: Virginia Mercury

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The Youngkin Department of Elections just recently began processing more than 107,000 voter registration applications dating back to last spring. This is after early voting had begun.

These applications involved residents who had registered through the Department of Motor Vehicles. The snafu is blamed on a computer “glitch” that caused “intermittent network issues within the Department of Elections” that resulted in the Department of Elections not picking up on the applications. No one in that office seemed to notice the sudden drop-off in “motor voter” registrations that began in May.

The result is that local registrars had bunches of new registration applications dumped on them during their busiest part of the year. The Chesterfield registrar suddenly had about 5,000 applications to process, for example; Henrico had about 4,500; and Hanover, 1,100.

Virginia Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals has issued assurances that no applications have been lost and the local registrars, without complaining, are grinning and bearing it. They are the ones that will bear the brunt of the work in processing those applications quickly. “It just means we’re going to have to work long hours to get it done,” said the Richmond registrar.

State Senator Lionel Spruill, D-Chesapeake, chair of the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, wants some answers. As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he recently wrote to Beals and posed these questions:

  • What has caused the “intermittent network issues”?
  • Why have these issues not happened before?
  • Why are they occurring after voting has begun and shortly before an election?
  • Is the department prepared to handle same-day voter registration on Election Day?
  • Are there any bills and/or budget authority that your department requires to avoid these kinds of issues in the future?

The voters of the Commonwealth also deserve to know the answers to these questions.

It is worth noting that some folks on this blog were quick to jump on any incident during the last administration that seemed to them to indicate incompetence or bad intentions. See here and here for examples. Those same folks have been curiously silent over this revelation.

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Comments

28 responses to “Oops! Look What We Just Found!”

  1. walter smith Avatar
    walter smith

    Really? I think I’m pretty consistent that government $uck$… It just tends to $uck less under Rs than Ds
    And is it fair to ask if those new registrations are just people moving from one jurisdiction to another and what can we do to ensure there is no hanky panky?
    Like Voter ID and same day voting? Is there any possibility that a bad actor could use excess registrations? How come Fairfax always turns in its votes last?
    Oh, and the DMV screwed up…is surprising…how? Have you experienced that joy recently?

    1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      This was not a DMV screw up. The Dept. of Elections admitted that the problem was on their end.

      1. walter smith Avatar
        walter smith

        OK. Still not surprised that our government “servants” are less than exemplary…
        So you would agree that we should all pay attention to tightening up our election offices? I’m with you!

        1. James McCarthy Avatar
          James McCarthy

          Once again, not in Dick’s statements. Keep trying.

          1. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            The elections board isn’t… Wow. How did I miss that? Of the 107,000 addresses to be updated, how many are moves? How many are new? Do we have a process to remove from the old jurisdictions the ones who moved? Seems germane to his story, but you do you. Is it being an “election denier” to want a clean and transparent process with opportunities for cheating minimized? That’s right – when Republicans win, they stole it, and when Dems win, any questions means you are a racist, insurrectionist. Just want consistency… You know, the rule of law thing. How do you like bringing the FBI out to those dangerous abortion protestors singing hymns? Any problem with that? Maybe they should firebomb them like the tolerant Left has been doing to the pro-life places… Or, maybe somebody from the tolerant Left would denounce the people trying to kill Kavanaugh or Lee Zeldin, but the people on the Right are the dangerous ones!
            Once, you Libs were at least consistent, and cared about civil rights, now you just project your fascism onto others like an IMax…

    2. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      Yes!!! Eliminate government!!! R & D no exceptions.

  2. vicnicholls Avatar
    vicnicholls

    So the DMV that Youngkin got working (he’s Governor of Va, not head of DMV, Dick) actually found errors and sent them out to fix. People have commented on it. So someone who actually got the DMV on top of things, finds errors, get things out, and you have a problem with it? On top of that, why do you call it Youngkins’ DMV when he’s not the IT head, not an IT person in that dept, and not the head of the DMV? Did you do that with the other guys? Nope. #politicalPoodoo #asusual

    1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      This was not a DMV issue. The article makes it clear that the problem was on the Dept. of Elections side.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        And, NOT at the receiving end, or at the bottom end of the food chain.

        Wonder what they were doing with all that data for so long?

        Youngkin’s made a believer of me. Now, I do have “questions about the election process.”

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          You do nave to wonder for the folks who have been expressed “concern” about elections – themselves don’t seem to mind making changes that might harm elections.

          At the end of the day, many voters, left and right are going to lose faith in our elections – a terrible thing for the country that led the world at some point in free and fair elections.

      2. vicnicholls Avatar
        vicnicholls

        DMV should have noticed the glitches first. When I do any type of “transfering” like that, we have checks to make sure they work. If there were network issues, DMV could have notified. I also correspond w/both sides (incoming from and outgoing to) on anything like this. DoE could and should have done the same. This is basic stuff much less election data.

        1. James McCarthy Avatar
          James McCarthy

          Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Just not what happened.

    2. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      It was NOT a DMV glitch or problem but one of the Election Board. Read the article again.

  3. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    YOUNGKIN: Well, what — what I do know is that we have — we have questions about the election process.

    Well, no wonder. You created them.

  4. kls Avatar
    kls

    I can’t wait for the government to start running the public funded EV charging stations along I-81.

  5. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      ‘Tis a small mind what knows only one spelling for a werd.”

  6. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I received a post card from the elections folks confirming my registration. I wonder if the folks who registered at DMV ever received confirmation of their registration?

    If not, who would they go to, to get it figured out? The local registrar or the SBOE? Surely out of all those thousands , some folks followed up to try to confirm their registration.

  7. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    Sounds like Jason Miryares was quite correct in establishing an Election Integrity effort in Virginia.

    “The result is that local registrars had bunches of new registration applications dumped on them during their busiest part of the year.”

    Boo hoo hoo. Maybe they even worked on Indigenous Peoples’ Day … you know, like every non-government employee does.

    Virginia’s state government has proven incapable of running its IT systems since Bob McDonnell was Governor (and maybe before that).

    Youngkin’s people should have seen the decline in voter registrations. Of course, that would require high school level reporting from the IT systems. But, Northam removed the Secretary of Technology from the cabinet. How forward looking! How important could technology possibly be?

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      re: ” Virginia’s state government has proven incapable of running its IT systems since Bob McDonnell was Governor (and maybe before that).”

      Did you get your Virginia Tax Rebate?

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        Running an effective IT operation doesn’t mean occasionally getting things right. Well, maybe in gub’mint it does. However, in the private sector you have to do more than get one transaction right to claim victory.

        1. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          “Running an effective IT operation doesn’t mean occasionally getting things right.”

          Uh, that’s EXACTLY what it means.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Millions of people get their Social Security and Medicare “right”. When we file taxes, 9 times out of 10, we trust the IRS to correctly process the return. When we go to an ATM – we EXPECT to get our money distributed. Try that in some countries. When we get in a car, we expect the safety systems to work. Ditto on airliners. We take GPS , a govt operation, to be “right”. On and on – the govt get’s it “right” way more often that not – except for the naysayers.

          2. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Which only shows how Podunk the Youngkin administration is.

        2. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Yup. Agree. Is your drivers license and license stuff correct?

          How about your covid shots?

          Do you trust traffic lights when they go green to trust them?

          Do you trust banks and investment companies without FDIC and govt rules?

        3. James McCarthy Avatar
          James McCarthy

          Ah, the perfektion of private enterprise.

  8. Stephen Haner Avatar
    Stephen Haner

    Ok, but they caught it, and in time to fix it. Dick, you and I have both watched the state struggle with tech integration for decades. We have a saying in our household — Technology is great! (When it works.)

    Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t recall jumping up and screaming to make partisan points when the unemployment insurance system worked so horribly over the past two years, because of my memories of headaches under all governors in my time. Plus I was with Northrup Grumman for a while. It was the shipyard, not the IT side, but watching that from that POV didn’t leave me warm and fuzzy.

    Ooops. Following the links Dick provided seems I did jump in and comment on a Bacon post about the UI debacle. Oh well. Stuff happens. That UI mess lingers but the voters can get updated and will be.

  9. Stephen Haner Avatar
    Stephen Haner

    Since last Monday I’ve spent five afternoons as a poll watcher at the Henrico Courthouse. This issue is being fixed. People who come in and have a data issue are being processed, and the the folks on the registrar’s staff are reporting good progress in making the additions/corrections/updates based on what DMV sent over. They caught it and are fixing it.

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