Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Fairfax County Has More Registered Voters than Adults Old Enough to Vote

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Be sure to vote — but in only one jurisdiction!

More Northern Virginia news you will never read in the Washington Post… Fairfax County has a registration rate of 105%, according to conservative activist group Judicial Watch. In other words, the number of voter registrations exceeds the number of citizens in the county old enough to  vote.

During the last reporting period, the county removed only 5,800 voter registrations per year due to failure of registrants to respond to address-confirmation notices and failure to vote in two consecutive elections. “This is a very low number of removals for a county of this size,” said Judicial Watch in a letter to Gary D. Scott, the county registrar and director of elections. (The county population is about 1.15 million.)

Judicial Watch is not alleging that any voter fraud has occurred. Rather, the organization contends that Fairfax County is failing to comply with federal law.

“Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections and Judicial Watch will insist, in court if necessary, that states follow federal law to clean up their voting rolls,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a press release. “It is common sense that voters who die or move away be removed from the voting rolls.”

The letter to the Fairfax County registrar was one of 19 sent to election registration officials in large counties around the country after a comparison of the number of registered voters with the county’s population. As the letter to Scott explains, “An unusually high registration rate suggests that a jurisdiction is not removing voters who have died or who have moved elsewhere.”

Bacon’s bottom line: Why not be diligent about cleaning up voter registration rolls? Who does it hurt? … Or does this just constitute another form of “voter suppression”?

— JAB

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33 responses to “Fairfax County Has More Registered Voters than Adults Old Enough to Vote”

  1. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    What, dead people cannot vote, too? People who have moved shouldn’t be able to vote in both locations? What’s your problem?

    Two words. Motor Voter. We all want resident aliens, those here legally and living, studying or working, to have valid driving licences. And when they get those, with no fraudulent intent, they end up registered to vote as well. Happens a lot, again with no fraudulent intent. But once on the voter roll, they get the mail, the phone calls, and they just show up and vote. This comes to light later when they go for a citizenship application, a background check reveals they have already been voting, and they have to file an affidavit about how that came to happen. Some say this is a big enough problem to affect the outcome (Trump), some say its negligible, but many elections are decided by a handful of votes…..

    Don’t you just hate it when Trump has a point? 🙂

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    and Jim – you’d be wrong about WaPo:

    Fairfax officials say some people may have crossed Va.-Md. line to vote twice in 2012

    Tens of thousands of voters were registered to cast ballots in both Virginia and Maryland during the 2012 presidential election — and more than 150 appear to have voted twice, an advocacy group claims.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fairfax-officials-say-some-people-may-have-crossed-state-lines-to-vote-twice-in-2012/2014/08/28/391b4210-2edb-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      OK, Larry, you’re right — The Washington Post did raise the issue more than five years ago!

  3. CrazyJD Avatar
    CrazyJD

    Larry,

    You’re ignoring the fact that these days you don’t have to travel across state lines to vote on election day. You can vote early or absentee, either by mail (if available), or stopping by an election place when you happen to be in NOVA.

  4. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    It’s wrong to suppress a person’s right to vote when qualified under state law. But it’s equally wrong to dilute the votes of qualified citizens by failing to enforce voting laws or take appropriate measures to ensure voter roles are up to date and people provide required identification.

    I support the idea of provisional voting that allows a person to vote and have that vote count when they come back with required information within the specified period of time. But people who don’t vote for a specified period of time and don’t respond to notices sent to them should be stricken from the roles. Similarly, if a local government receives information that indicates a person has moved from the jurisdiction, that person should be struck from the voter roles.

    If Fairfax County refuses to follow up on this information, it once again shows that it holds its citizens in low regard.

  5. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    This claim by Judicial Watch seems too full of holes to be credible enough to take the county to court. First of all, its number of people of voting age living in the county is based on Census estimates that, in themselves, are at least two years old. The population in Fairfax is growing. Second, the “high” rate “suggests” the jurisdiction is not removing folks from the voting rolls in accordance with law. No real examples of noncompliance, just a subjective “suggestion”. Third, the removal of 5,800 names is “very low”, according to Judicial Watch. That sounds like a subjective judgment to me. Shouldn’t a threatened lawsuit be based on more than “suggestive” indicators and a subjective evaluation of “very low” compliance? I would be more sympathetic if Judicial Watch had taken a random sample of registered voters and determined how many of them had not responded to a notice after missing two consecutive elections. I would not be surprised if Fairfax County election officials ignore this letter or at least refuse to answer all the demands it contains.

  6. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    What, dead people cannot vote, too? People who have moved shouldn’t be able to vote in both locations? What’s your problem?

    Two words. Motor Voter. We all want resident aliens, those here legally and living, studying or working, to have valid driving licences. And when they get those, with no fraudulent intent, they end up registered to vote as well. Happens a lot, again with no fraudulent intent. But once on the voter roll, they get the mail, the phone calls, and they just show up and vote. This comes to light later when they go for a citizenship application, a background check reveals they have already been voting, and they have to file an affidavit about how that came to happen. Some say this is a big enough problem to affect the outcome (Trump), some say its negligible, but many elections are decided by a handful of votes…..

    Don’t you just hate it when Trump has a point? 🙂

  7. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Don’t think I’d cite Trump as having a point when his point is often akin to conspiracy theories with no actual facts.

    But Steve has actually worked at a voting precinct as have I – and no matter what the voting rolls say or not – at the poll itself – no illegal voter is going to succeed unless they have false IDs that match what the voter rolls say. In other words, if they actually have a dead persons ID – PHOTO ID – and they look like the photo – it’s going to be tough sledding. Similarly, if their ID address does not match the voter roll address IN THE PRECINCT -they cannot vote except as possibly provisionally.

    I don’t know about Steve’s experience but we’d typically see one or two provisionals and we turned away a dozen or more who complained they were valid but their address was not for our precinct ….

    It’s pretty tough to vote in Va if you don’t have a valid photo ID and matching address.

    Judcial Watch has a housekeeping issue and I agree that a better job ought to be done but again when it comes down to election day – it’s tough to vote fraudulently in Virginia.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Larry, am I correcting in deducing from your comment that you favor Voter ID?

    2. Atlas Rand Avatar
      Atlas Rand

      Larry,

      After years of reading this blog I’m still surprised at how wrong you are on almost everything. I hope that you are not working polls and fraudulently stopping people from voting. For starters the DMV does not require you to get a new Drivers license when you change your address. Reporting the address change satisfies the requirement to update your address within 30 days of moving. For example my Drivers license still reflects my address from 5 years ago, in which time I have moved twice. It does not match my registered election address. Secondly, you do not have to use a photo id with address to vote. My state employee ID, a passport, employer ID, etc are acceptable ids to vote, none of which has an address. A poll worker is supposed to ask aloud if you live at the registered address, and others may challenge your assertion if they believe you are fraudulently representing your residence. I have voted in 4 elections with no issues until this year when I had to educate the poll workers in my current county as to what constitutes valid ID, as they tried to require me to show a DL rather than accepting my state employee photo ID.

      1. Steve Haner Avatar
        Steve Haner

        You too miss my point – somebody who is not a citizen gets a valid DL and proceeds to vote. You are correct that many forms of ID are allowed and I’ve personally seen and welcomed passports, military ID’s, work ID’s and school ID’s. But of those, only the passport means “citizen.”

  8. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Don’t think I’d cite Trump as having a point when his point is often akin to conspiracy theories with no actual facts.

    But Steve has actually worked at a voting precinct as have I – and no matter what the voting rolls say or not – at the poll itself – no illegal voter is going to succeed unless they have false IDs that match what the voter rolls say. In other words, if they actually have a dead persons ID – PHOTO ID – and they look like the photo – it’s going to be tough sledding. Similarly, if their ID address does not match the voter roll address IN THE PRECINCT -they cannot vote except as possibly provisionally.

    I don’t know about Steve’s experience but we’d typically see one or two provisionals and we turned away a dozen or more who complained they were valid but their address was not for our precinct ….

    It’s pretty tough to vote in Va if you don’t have a valid photo ID and matching address.

    Judcial Watch has a housekeeping issue and I agree that a better job ought to be done but again when it comes down to election day – it’s tough to vote fraudulently in Virginia.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Larry, am I correcting in deducing from your comment that you favor Voter ID?

  9. oursidemedia Avatar
    oursidemedia

    The assumption from groups like JW is that the jurisdiction is either committing fraud or welcoming it. This is coming from groups and individuals who take President Trump’s words at face value with no scrutiny: Trump’s claims that people are voting twice, three times, four times; that people are being “bused in” from other states to vote, etc. Anyone who believes one of these claims has zero credibility and should be laughed out of any public forum where these issues are addressed by serious, informed people.

    The Republican Party is responsible for vote caging: the practice of sending certified mail (that which the recipient needs to sign upon receipt) to voters and then claiming that the unsigned letters are proof that the voter doesn’t live there and should thus be stricken from the rolls. Federal courts have already ruled against them for this practice but they continue it. If the voter happens to not be home when the mail arrives then they can be a victim of these scams. And they are targeted at low-income and minority communities, who tend to vote Democratic.

    The reality in Virginia is that we have voter ID and systems that indicate if a person has already voted, so this invalidates much of the MAGA crowd’s beliefs off the bat. Next, to address those who have died or moved away, the Office of Elections does indeed conduct maintenance of the voter rolls. If you miss voting for a long period, then they do check – but not with certified mail. If you register in another state then that state is supposed to send the data to Virginia.

    I read their letter and am suspicious of JW’s assertions because they provide almost no numbers. What’s the size of the voting age population they are getting from the Census data? Which registered voter count are they going with? As Hall-Sizemore notes above, that could be outdated as Fairfax is a growing county.

    Republicans have explicitly stated that the reason for their efforts is to stop people from voting. They do this because they know that when more citizens vote, Democrats win, and when fewer citizens vote, Republicans win. Just look at the elections of 2014 when we had the lowest turnout since WWII and the GOP took over the US Senate. If you’re in the party that can only win when you stop people from voting, you need to reevaluate your life choices.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      So…. you see no necessity to purge the voter rolls of people who longer live in a jurisdiction?

    2. blackhatpress Avatar
      blackhatpress

      “The reality in Virginia is that we have voter ID”?
      No. We don’t. The worst Governor in America, along with the worst Legislature in the history of the Commonwealth, repealed the Voter ID law last year.
      Fairfax County government- the Board of Supervisors and school board – are owned by the Democrats. If you win Fairfax, you win the state.
      Anyone who thinks this it isn’t corrupt as hell to have 105% registration rate doesn’t want a legitimate vote to occur in the first place – because it is working for them.
      https://www.13newsnow.com/mobile/article/news/local/virginia/gov-northam-signs-legislation-that-repeals-virginia-vote-id-law-makes-election-day-state-holiday/291-1c4ef0d1-1578-4646-b7b9-93350c29315a

  10. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    Dick, your honesty and intellectual skill regularly impress me. I mean this too. But the Post could have easily written your last comment and probably will.

    Having more voters than adults raises a serious issue and undermines confidence in government. The National Voters Registration Act requires states to take reasonable steps to clean their voting rolls.

    Moreover, a similar Judicial Watch claim was settled a case in California that resulted in Los Angeles County removing 1.5 million “inactive” voters from the roles. Kentucky signed a consent decree and is removing 250,000 names from the voter roles. SCOTUS upheld a settlement that involved Judicial Watch and the State of Ohio. I’d bet on Judicial Watch over the Fairfax County board of supervisors.

    Fairfax County should take the claim seriously and have it fairly investigated. If they don’t, taxpayers will need to fund a needless lawsuit.

    I really liked JFK and dislike Nixon; but it’s pretty clear that Nixon won Illinois in 1960. Mayor Daley delivered the vote of the dead. We deserve better than that.

  11. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    You are but I also favor motor voting and vote by mail (with the appropriate safeguards).

    And in order to do that – you do need to have a better process for shedding inactive or invalid voters.

    1. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      You are avoiding my point that with a valid driver license these folks have ID, but they are not citizens and you and I at check-in would never know that. The motor voter process makes this mistake easy. More at this website: https://publicinterestlegal.org/

  12. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    You are but I also favor motor voting and vote by mail (with the appropriate safeguards).

    And in order to do that – you do need to have a better process for shedding inactive or invalid voters.

  13. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    The thing about Judicial Watch is that they’re essentially cherry-picking data and targeting some counties – as opposed to looking at data from a wider range of jurisdictions and comparing and contrasting the number of registered, the number of actual voters, etc – to determine if some are actually negligent or the process itself is a problem across the board – AND what might be done to improve it.

    If Fairfax is not following the State elections process – and other counties are – that needs to be shown. If there are other counties large and small with similar issues – show them also. IF the state process itself is deficient – then show that.

    Don’t make it a partisan issue or about “liberals”, dead folks, voter fraud, etc.

    Just do an honest hard look , report the results and advocate for specific improvements – then you get credibililty instead of categorized as just another conservative activist group competing against WaPo.

  14. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    The thing about Judicial Watch is that they’re essentially cherry-picking data and targeting some counties – as opposed to looking at data from a wider range of jurisdictions and comparing and contrasting the number of registered, the number of actual voters, etc – to determine if some are actually negligent or the process itself is a problem across the board – AND what might be done to improve it.

    If Fairfax is not following the State elections process – and other counties are – that needs to be shown. If there are other counties large and small with similar issues – show them also. IF the state process itself is deficient – then show that.

    Don’t make it a partisan issue or about “liberals”, dead folks, voter fraud, etc.

    Just do an honest hard look , report the results and advocate for specific improvements – then you get credibililty instead of categorized as just another conservative activist group competing against WaPo.

  15. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    and Jim – you’d be wrong about WaPo:

    Fairfax officials say some people may have crossed Va.-Md. line to vote twice in 2012

    Tens of thousands of voters were registered to cast ballots in both Virginia and Maryland during the 2012 presidential election — and more than 150 appear to have voted twice, an advocacy group claims.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fairfax-officials-say-some-people-may-have-crossed-state-lines-to-vote-twice-in-2012/2014/08/28/391b4210-2edb-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      OK, Larry, you’re right — The Washington Post did raise the issue more than five years ago!

  16. CrazyJD Avatar
    CrazyJD

    Larry,

    You’re ignoring the fact that these days you don’t have to travel across state lines to vote on election day. You can vote early or absentee, either by mail (if available), or stopping by an election place when you happen to be in NOVA.

  17. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    It’s wrong to suppress a person’s right to vote when qualified under state law. But it’s equally wrong to dilute the votes of qualified citizens by failing to enforce voting laws or take appropriate measures to ensure voter roles are up to date and people provide required identification.

    I support the idea of provisional voting that allows a person to vote and have that vote count when they come back with required information within the specified period of time. But people who don’t vote for a specified period of time and don’t respond to notices sent to them should be stricken from the roles. Similarly, if a local government receives information that indicates a person has moved from the jurisdiction, that person should be struck from the voter roles.

    If Fairfax County refuses to follow up on this information, it once again shows that it holds its citizens in low regard.

  18. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    This claim by Judicial Watch seems too full of holes to be credible enough to take the county to court. First of all, its number of people of voting age living in the county is based on Census estimates that, in themselves, are at least two years old. The population in Fairfax is growing. Second, the “high” rate “suggests” the jurisdiction is not removing folks from the voting rolls in accordance with law. No real examples of noncompliance, just a subjective “suggestion”. Third, the removal of 5,800 names is “very low”, according to Judicial Watch. That sounds like a subjective judgment to me. Shouldn’t a threatened lawsuit be based on more than “suggestive” indicators and a subjective evaluation of “very low” compliance? I would be more sympathetic if Judicial Watch had taken a random sample of registered voters and determined how many of them had not responded to a notice after missing two consecutive elections. I would not be surprised if Fairfax County election officials ignore this letter or at least refuse to answer all the demands it contains.

  19. oursidemedia Avatar
    oursidemedia

    The assumption from groups like JW is that the jurisdiction is either committing fraud or welcoming it. This is coming from groups and individuals who take President Trump’s words at face value with no scrutiny: Trump’s claims that people are voting twice, three times, four times; that people are being “bused in” from other states to vote, etc. Anyone who believes one of these claims has zero credibility and should be laughed out of any public forum where these issues are addressed by serious, informed people.

    The Republican Party is responsible for vote caging: the practice of sending certified mail (that which the recipient needs to sign upon receipt) to voters and then claiming that the unsigned letters are proof that the voter doesn’t live there and should thus be stricken from the rolls. Federal courts have already ruled against them for this practice but they continue it. If the voter happens to not be home when the mail arrives then they can be a victim of these scams. And they are targeted at low-income and minority communities, who tend to vote Democratic.

    The reality in Virginia is that we have voter ID and systems that indicate if a person has already voted, so this invalidates much of the MAGA crowd’s beliefs off the bat. Next, to address those who have died or moved away, the Office of Elections does indeed conduct maintenance of the voter rolls. If you miss voting for a long period, then they do check – but not with certified mail. If you register in another state then that state is supposed to send the data to Virginia.

    I read their letter and am suspicious of JW’s assertions because they provide almost no numbers. What’s the size of the voting age population they are getting from the Census data? Which registered voter count are they going with? As Hall-Sizemore notes above, that could be outdated as Fairfax is a growing county.

    Republicans have explicitly stated that the reason for their efforts is to stop people from voting. They do this because they know that when more citizens vote, Democrats win, and when fewer citizens vote, Republicans win. Just look at the elections of 2014 when we had the lowest turnout since WWII and the GOP took over the US Senate. If you’re in the party that can only win when you stop people from voting, you need to reevaluate your life choices.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      So…. you see no necessity to purge the voter rolls of people who longer live in a jurisdiction?

    2. blackhatpress Avatar
      blackhatpress

      “The reality in Virginia is that we have voter ID”?
      No. We don’t. The worst Governor in America, along with the worst Legislature in the history of the Commonwealth, repealed the Voter ID law last year.
      Fairfax County government- the Board of Supervisors and school board – are owned by the Democrats. If you win Fairfax, you win the state.
      Anyone who thinks this it isn’t corrupt as hell to have 105% registration rate doesn’t want a legitimate vote to occur in the first place – because it is working for them.
      https://www.13newsnow.com/mobile/article/news/local/virginia/gov-northam-signs-legislation-that-repeals-virginia-vote-id-law-makes-election-day-state-holiday/291-1c4ef0d1-1578-4646-b7b9-93350c29315a

  20. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    Dick, your honesty and intellectual skill regularly impress me. I mean this too. But the Post could have easily written your last comment and probably will.

    Having more voters than adults raises a serious issue and undermines confidence in government. The National Voters Registration Act requires states to take reasonable steps to clean their voting rolls.

    Moreover, a similar Judicial Watch claim was settled a case in California that resulted in Los Angeles County removing 1.5 million “inactive” voters from the roles. Kentucky signed a consent decree and is removing 250,000 names from the voter roles. SCOTUS upheld a settlement that involved Judicial Watch and the State of Ohio. I’d bet on Judicial Watch over the Fairfax County board of supervisors.

    Fairfax County should take the claim seriously and have it fairly investigated. If they don’t, taxpayers will need to fund a needless lawsuit.

    I really liked JFK and dislike Nixon; but it’s pretty clear that Nixon won Illinois in 1960. Mayor Daley delivered the vote of the dead. We deserve better than that.

  21. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    Why not concede the obvious, that it would be more fair, more efficient, and far less amenable to manipulation and abuse, not to mention less expensive, to have all elections conducted under federal law pursuant to federal criteria (federal, State and local) using an ID card issued by the federal government to every citizen (and non-citizen, so indicating) for that purpose?

  22. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    Why not concede the obvious, that it would be more fair, more efficient, and far less amenable to manipulation and abuse, not to mention less expensive, to have all elections conducted under federal law pursuant to federal criteria (federal, State and local) using an ID card issued by the federal government to every citizen (and non-citizen, so indicating) for that purpose?

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