By Christine Favocci August 8, 2024 at 5:39pm
Gov. Glenn Youngkin is tightening up Virginia’s voting procedures. Cue the raging leftists.
The Virginia Republican issued an executive order mandating paper ballots and other protocols meant to ensure free and fair elections in time for the 2024 presidential election.
“Today, we issued Executive Order 35, codifying our administration’s model for election security,” Youngkin posted to social media platform X Wednesday.
“This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted,” Youngkin wrote.
Today, we issued Executive Order 35, codifying our administration’s model for election security. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted. https://t.co/v2REWwoJkH
— Governor Glenn Youngkin (@GovernorVA) August 7, 2024
The order mandates paper ballots with a “documented chain of custody” that will be counted but not cast by machine. Notably, the counting machines won’t be connected to the internet.
Virginia will also cross-check voters’ Social Security numbers and DMV records to verify identity and will do the same for absentee ballots.
Any “non-citizens,” including illegal immigrants, found on voter rolls will have their registration canceled.
Should all states shift to a vote-solely-on-election-day setup?
“We verify the legal presence and identity of voters using DMV data and other trusted data sources to update our voter rolls daily, not only adding new voters, but scrubbing the lists to remove those that should not be on it, like the deceased, individuals that have moved, and non-citizens that have accidentally or maliciously attempted to register,” Youngkin said in a news release about the executive order.
This latest move is part of Youngkin’s continued effort to secure Virginia’s balloting system ahead of Election Day.
Voters have become uneasy about the security of elections following the 2020 presidential election with all of its irregularities that definitely weren’t due to voting machines.
It was dubbed the “most secure in history,” but many voters felt vote-by-mail and other novel provisions poisoned the well.
In the aftermath, any official who has dared to address those concerns with common sense measures has been smeared and shouted down.
The most extreme example of this came in the wake of Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which passed in 2021.
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department sued the state for supposedly resurrecting Jim Crow laws against black voters simply because it required identification to vote.
The ripple effect spread to Major League Baseball, which moved its 2021 All-Star Game out of Georgia over the new law, while others boycotted the state.
The din has quieted down since then, but leftists are poised to pounce — especially if their candidate loses — whenever someone tries to make sure votes are only cast by those legally eligible to do so.
Perhaps they’re content with other ways to game the system in Virginia and other states, like early voting and vote-by-mail.
Still, Youngkin has made significant progress toward securing Old Dominion’s protocols for casting ballots, just in time for the most important national election in decades — and that’s great news for Virginia and for America.