RICHMOND — Two Republican officials overseeing elections have launched a lawsuit asserting they will refuse to confirm the results of the upcoming November 5 election in a small Virginia city unless a manual count of the ballots is conducted. Their stance fosters the misleading idea that voting machines, which are used to tally votes, can be tampered with.
The legal action was initiated earlier this month in Waynesboro, Virginia, by Curtis Lilly, the chair of the city’s election board, and Scott Mares, the vice chair. In their complaint, Lilly and Mares contended that election officials lack access to the tallied votes from these machines, which they claim hinders their ability to validate “the results of the voting machine’s secret canvass.”
The officials believe that the current counting system breaches a section of the state Constitution, which mandates that the operations of such machines must be transparent and in public view.
Mares stated in an affidavit, “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.”
The lawsuit was filed in the Waynesboro District Court, with the Office of the Attorney General representing the Virginia Department of Elections and the State Board of Elections declining to provide remarks regarding ongoing legal matters.
This lawsuit emerges amidst a rising wave of conspiracy theories regarding elections across the U.S., particularly following former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election being stolen. In recent years, there has been a growing push for hand-counted ballots, despite studies indicating that such methods are often more susceptible to errors, more expensive, and can result in delayed election outcomes.
In Virginia, voters utilize paper ballots, which are then processed by machines. In August, Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, enacted an executive order requiring that these voting machines undergo testing prior to every election and remain disconnected from the internet to ensure security. His order also mandated regular updates to voter registration lists to eliminate ineligible individuals, a decision that has drawn criticism from the U.S. Justice Department, which claims it contravenes federal law.
“The Virginia model for Election Security works,” Youngkin remarked in an August statement. “This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans; this is an issue that pertains to all Americans and all Virginians.”