Virginia Election Integrity Efforts to Repeat for Midterms

Loudoun County, VA.—A grassroots election integrity initiative led to over 3,000 new poll watchers—the majority of them conservatives—working during the Virginia gubernatorial election. The result was a much higher Republican poll watcher presence at the ballot box.  Traditionally, more election officers and poll watchers have been Democrats. “For over a decade, they [Democrats] have focused on the election system, the election office, and changing the way people vote,” Cleta Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, told The Epoch Times.  However, during this Virginia gubernatorial election, Republican poll watchers outnumbered Democratic ones, according to Jonathan Haines, vice president of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.  Poll watcher turnout tends to be low in most elections, Haines said, except for in general elections for the presidency. But it was different in Virginia this time. For example, in Loudoun County, Republican poll watchers were present almost every day at …