Earlier this week we received word from BVBL that Faisal Gill outfiled Julie Lucas for the GOP convo being held on June 2 to nominate the candidate for the 51st House Dist by a 745 to 511 margin. Last night a meeting at the PWC GOP HQ was held to review those filings and something very interesting was discovered.
Out of all of Lucas’s filings, there were a total of two duplicates. Out of all of Gill’s filings, there were 50 duplicates and another 68 that were not registered to vote. Now we get into territory covered under the RPV Party Plan:
ARTICLE I
Participation in Party Actions[EFFECTIVE ON JUNE 15, 2006]
1. All legal and qualified voters under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, regardless of race, religion, national origin or sex, who are in accord with the principles of the Republican Party, and who, if requested, express in open meeting either orally or in writing as may be required their intent to support all of its nominees for public office in the ensuing election may participate as members of the Republican Party of Virginia in its mass meetings, party canvasses, conventions, or primaries encompassing their respective election districts.5. A person who has made application for registration and meets all other requirements of Section A, but whose name does not appear on the local registration books solely because of the books having been closed in connection with a local election, will nevertheless be deemed a legal and qualified voter.
So, even if someone isn’t registered to vote, but they have at least made application to do so, they will be deemed eligible to participate. Fair enough. But at what point will they have to have submitted an application by? This is emerging as the bone of contention here.
One school of thought is that the act of submitting a pre-filing form to participate in a convention is in and of itself a party action and thus one would have to have at least submitted a voter registration prior to this. A more lenient school of thought allows for one to submit a voter registration form after submitting a pre-filing form for a convention so long as the voter registration form is submitted prior to the pre-filing deadline for the convention. Under either scenario, the purpose of establishing a filing deadline, in order to ascertain one’s eligibility to participate in the party action, can be met.
Then there is the school of thought that was adopted discussed at the meeting last night. This would allow anyone who has submitted a pre-filing form to submit a voter registration form up until the convention itself. This is where things get dicey. How could the party verify that someone filed a voter registration form if they brought it into the registrar’s office at 4:59 p.m. on Friday and the office then closed? Would the office remain open so the party could inspect last minute filings? If not, who is to say that someone would ever register to vote? This would raise the very real possibility that dozens of people who are not even registered voters and may never be would hold sway in selecting a Republican nominee that they would not be able to vote for at the polls in November.
There are reasons for filing deadlines, whether it be voter registration for an election or pre-filing forms for a party convention — the main one being the ability to verify eligibility to participate. I am all for opening up the party and bringing new people in. At the same time, however, we must insure the integrity of the ballot and make certain that those participating in the process are eligible to do so and are not diluting the voting rights of others. That is the purpose of having such deadlines.
Under the approach adopted discussed last night, we may as well not have pre-filing — heck, we might as well just allow anyone who shows up to participate in our nominating contest regardless of whether they are registered to vote or even eligible to register to vote. This could set an extremely dangerous precedent for the future and allow Democrats, especially in places like PWC where their electoral prospects are dim, to come in and hijack GOP nominating contests either to install one of their own as the GOP nominee or else to help put up the weakest candidates to run against in November.
Clarification is needed here, not just for the sake of the 51st convention, but for future party actions throughout the Commonwealth.
UPDATE: According to Occoquan Supervisor Mike May, they are seeking review from RPV on this in order to clarify matters and determine when someone should have filed a voter registration form by in order to be eligible to participate. I am told that while various approaches were discussed, it is his impression that nothing has been adopted yet. Kudos to Mike for handling this in an even-handed manner.
Filed under: 2007 Elections, Prince William County Politics, Republican Party of Virginia
Jim,
Who made this decision?
I’m hearing now that this might not be a done deal and that this was only discussed, but not adopted and they are awaiting final word from RPV. Whether RPV gives them an answer or kicks it back to the Credentials Cmte. is anyone’s guess.
So under this plan conceivably, a felon, a person who has lost their right to vote for anything from theft to murder, could in theory vote in the Republican convention if he turned in his voter registration form late enough for the registrar to not have time to disqualified him from joining the voting roll before the convention. The same could be said for non-citizens? How would the PWCRC know that this person was not qualified to vote? He could say, in all honesty, that he registered. This is absolutely insane. A new low.
[...] has an update on the delegate filings for the 51st District convention today, and reports that Faisal Gill filed fifty duplicate delegate [...]
What would stop an illegal alien from voting at the Convention?
JL, I don’t know, did you invite some?
I should think that they could come up with a deadline somewhere between now and next friday.
I assume they discussed how they would know that there was a filing?
The Registrar has been closed to processing of registrations since May 13th, because of the June 12th primary. IT is this closure that prompts the rule. Normally, registration can be done in a day or two.
So, if there was not a primary on June 12th, the filed delegates would have up until probably wednesday, or maybe even thursday, to get their registration in order.
The rules about actually BEING registered would obviously apply at the time of the convention, so if the registrar’s office was open for registration right now, you couldn’t de-credential delegates unless they still had no registered by the day of the convention.
If you are going to allow at all the voting of people who have APPLIED for registration but not received it, it makes no sense to pick any time other than before the convention starts. There is no more difficulty involved in accepting a person who registered on May 21 or May 30 or June 1.
Again, if registrations weren’t temporarily suspended, the candidates would have taken the information about non-registered delegates, and gotten back to their delegates and gotten them registered this week. And they would have been legally required to be accepted at the convention.
So this is a lot to do about little. I do think that getting the RPV opinion is good since it is their rule, but I’m dissappointed that either candidate would seek to make an issue about this.
Hmm. It seems Greg’s site is down — at least I can’t get through the backlink to read his story about this. I’m sure it’s entertaining.
Meanwhile, if we assume that all the delegates filed by each were for each, and that somehow the Lucas camp will succeed in blocking all the republican delegates who signed up for Gill but were not yet registered, and assume the 32 non-specified delegate forms split equally:
Gill: : 643
Lucas: 525
It’s still all about who shows up, and how the are distributed in the precincts, but I’m betting Lucas supporters were hoping to be able to eliminate more of Gill’s delegates.
BTW, John Light does raise a legitimate concern, that’s not specific to this convention or to a candidate. The rule about registrations makes sense since we can’t control when the registrar closes down registrations, and our goal in registration review is just to make sure the people WILL be eligible to vote in November.
But without the registrar processing the registrations, it is difficult to know if the people will in the end BE approved.
You could do a provisional vote, and that way if their votes didn’t matter there would be no concern, and if they did matter you could then maybe wait for registration to re-open and see who is approved?
Alternatively, you could have the credentials committee request information normally handled by the registrars, such as birth certificates, proof of residency, passports, or some such things. That isn’t a big deal. In order to play soccer in MASA for example, we had to provide birth certificates for our children. That’s just to check the age, but it would work for the credentials committee to get better verification that an applicant WILL be registered.
Or we could ask the RPV to remove the provision, but as I said there’s a good reason for it to exist, and I doubt the RPV would want to repeal it. And actually, removing it might trigger a Voting Right’s Act review which we would really rather avoid.
Maybe AFTER this convention we can have a civil conversation about this, not wrapped around the efforts of disqualifying delegates in a specific race.
“5. A person who has made application for registration and meets all other requirements of Section A, but whose name does not appear on the local registration books solely because of the books having been closed in connection with a local election, will nevertheless be deemed a legal and qualified voter.”
Jim, this section of the Party Plan dates back to the days that you had to show either a birth certificate or proof of naturalization, as well as proof of domicile in the district in which you are voting before you could register to vote (WAY prior to “Motor Voter”). Now, with our new, extremely flawed system, all you need is to sign an application which states that you are qualified (as if no one lies…and everyone is able to read what they’re signing), and there is little that the Registrars are able to do to verify the information, although a challenge is investigated. If this isn’t easy enough, now they want to complain that they need more time?? Given that NONE of the applications already in are certified, I’d say that our credulity should already be stretched enough, and that there should be SOME time allowed to at least examine registrations for possible challenge, since the Registrars are unable to do so. If this is allowed to proceed in this illogical fashion, I can see some real court action getting involved here…maybe even some new precedents….
To my fellow bloggers:
I have discovered that Greg locked me out of his site, and has deleted all my comments. I think you who know me know I’m not offensive, rude, or unreasonable in my comments.
I have simply been forcefully defending Faisal Gill, and questioning people like Johnathan Mark who is using Gill to hammer our other republican office-holders.
So when you read Greg’s blog and think nobody is answering the critics, realise that people ARE providing answers, but Greg is deleting them.
Anke, you are correct that in general the registration system is weak. But that’s not Gill’s fault. And that section isn’t about a flawed registration system, it’s about an anomaly in the registration system where you can register any time up to a month before the general election, but they arbitrarily shut down registrations from time to time around primaries and the like.
So if you have a convention, and people are signing up and registering to vote, their registrations might be held up simply because there’s a primary. That’s the case here — if there was no primary on June 12th, all of these delegates would get registered this week, so by the convention the would all show up on the registration rolls.
The RPV plan allows people caught in those “processing holds” to still exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to vote.
It also allows for people without that constitutional right to vote.
Oh no Charles…that doesn’t wash. The same rule applies to voting in a Primary. When the books are closed, 30 days before the election, and you fail to register, that’s it…you don’t vote. That RPV section I quoted has existed as long as I’ve been an active member of the Republican Party, and that was before I was able to register and vote at 21years of age…yup, I’ve been around that long. That section should have been adapted to Motor Voter just as the SBE had to adapt the State voting regs to it. It’s about time that it is, but that doesn’t change, only reaffirm, what I said in my previous comment.
Anke, why do you think that this section is effected specifically by “motor voter”?
For primaries, the rules explicitly state that you have to register a month before the primary. People have to follow the rules.
But for conventions, the rules are based on the PARTY plan. and the RPV plan says only that you have to be registered at the time of the convention.
BUT, the conventions are not coordinated with the SBE (I wish they were, and if they were I’d be happy if we cut off registration in line with the SBE rules).
So, for example, if the Governor calls a special election, the SBE rules say that registration cuts off ONE WEEK before the election, rather than one month.
Anyway, with the convention rules saying you just have to register before the convention, but with the SBE having arbitrary frozen time periods based on a primary schedule which is independent of the convention schedule, it would mean that different voters would have different rules, which would violate the equal protection clause.
For example, if we had the McQuigg convention, that would have been on May 19. Since the primary freeze was May 13, anybody who registered within 6 days of the convention would get to vote.
But for a convention June 2nd, you’d have to register 21 days ahead. And if you had a June 9th convention, it would be 28 days.
I can’t be certain why the RPV has the rule, but the problem with differing rules for the same class of voters would be a strong argument.
And as to your claim that the RPV has accidentally left this in, I will note that the RPV made a major modification to this section of the RPV plan very recently. The clause “5″ you cite was actually clause “2″ before 2006. So if they thought the clause was invalid, they could easily have removed it.
I am betting that to remove it would invite a claim under the Voting Rights act, but I’m no lawyer.
In any case, whether the RPV should have the rule or not, the fact is the rule is there, and it is clear — if you try to register, but registration is temporaily closed, you can still vote in a convention, so long as you show that you FILED for registration.
You are quite right that this opens the door to possible fraud. It will be harder for the credentials committee. It could lead to people voting who are later rejected by the registrar.
And since the Primary cutoff was May 13th, and our delegate sign-up cutoff was May 21, it was quite likely that during the last week of canvassing, both candidates could have encountered new voters who were eager to support the candidate but couldn’t register anymore.
I have no idea why the Lucas campaign found NO new voters in the last week. For all I know, they did, and it just wasn’t reported here. But if they had, I’d make the same argument, because I’ve always been for opening up to all voters.
I think the credentials committee can adopt some clear and strict guidelines to verify accuracy. And I think they could apply a “provisional ballot” to these votes at the convention.
But I refuse to give in to this bizarre fiction that signing up new republican voters is a bad thing. Every year we send people out to the neighborhoods and shopping centers to try to sign up new voters to be republicans. People move into the state. People are discouraged by the political process, but might be motivated by a strong candidate like a Julie Lucas or a Faisal Gill showing up at their door and convincing them to become active in the voting process again.
This is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. If there are delegates who are NOT qualified to vote (and there always are a few), the credentials committee, with McQuigg and May along with representatives from the candidate’s staffs, is perfectly capable of finding and removing unqualified delegates. And if necessary, getting passport or birth records or other records from the new voters to satisfy both candidates that they will be registered voters.
I will also note again that the delegate form does NOT say that the signee IS registered. Signing is only that you are a republican and will vote republican, and that you READ the rules. The form is on the web site, and it is clear.
In fact, if you were to find a new voter while canvassing, you might well hand them a registration form, and get them to fill out and sign a delegate form. You aren’t going to tell them to go register and then call back when they are done.
“Anyway, with the convention rules saying you just have to register before the convention,…”
There you have it Charles…according to SBE and the local Registrar’s definition, one is not registered until the application (which these folks are claiming as proof of registration) is processed. Ergo, by your definition, and since no more applications are processed within 30 days of the Primaries, these folks are not registered. I knew we could find common ground.
“But I refuse to give in to this bizarre fiction that signing up new republican voters is a bad thing.”
It’s not a bad thing Charles…if they are actually able to legally vote. THAT’S where the great debate is going. It was a lot easier to determine that in the old days, before “Motor Voter.”
That is true, Anke, they are not registered. But the RPV plan also clearly states that, for the purpose of the convention, if they have FILED for registration, but the registration has not been recorded BECAUSE registrations are closed due to an election, those delegates who have FIILED for registration will be deemed to be QUALIFIED VOTERS.
We can argue about whether that is a good thing, but there is NO doubt that any delegate who has filed to register must be considered QUALIFIED, even if they don’t appear on the registrar’s list, becuase of rule 5.
We can’t ignore the rule just because we don’t like the outcome. I know some (like Greg) were shocked that this existed, but as you note AW, it’s been there forever, and if it really had no purpose, someone surely would have gotten rid of it sometime in the past 50 years.
As I have said, I support finding some way to try to verify as best we can that these people will clear registration. But we can’t just ignore the rule. The rule is clear — if you can show at the convention that you ARE registered, OR if you can show at the convention that you FILED for registration, you shall be deemed qualified to vote.
I can’t imagine why the credentials committee couldn’t figure that out themselves, but so long as the RPV can respond quickly, appealing to a higher authority isn’t a bad solution, just an unnecessary one.
“But the RPV plan also clearly states that, for the purpose of the convention, if they have FILED for registration, but the registration has not been recorded BECAUSE registrations are closed due to an election, those delegates who have FIILED for registration will be deemed to be QUALIFIED VOTERS.”
That’s true Charles, but that’s not the way that the Call was written, according to your own quote from it over at TC (““All legal and qualified voters of the 51st District under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia,…”). The law of the Commonwealth of Virginia is that anyone who applies after the books are closed are NOT legally registered or qualified.
But the call goes on to say that the party considers that you are a “legal and qualified voter” if the ONLY reason you are not on the books is because the books have been closed for the ensuing election (which is the June 12 primary).
Now to the issue of someone submitting a form at 4:59 pm on June 1. Come the morning of June 2, that person’s name does not fail to appear SOLELY because the books are closed for the ensuing election (on June 12). That name is not on the list because it was submitted as the office was closing on a Friday. (If the books were still technically open, that name wouldn’t appear for however many days following that it takes the registrar’s office to clear you and post you.)
To figure out if a name is SOLELY not on the list because the books have closed, one should identify the date of the ensuing election as June 2 since that is the date of the convention. If one submitted an application to vote to the registrar’s office prior to June 2, then how much time would the registrar’s office need to clear you and put your name on the books? I don’t know how long – maybe 2 or 3 days, I’m guessing. The registrar’s office could certainly tell us. Then whatever THAT date is should be the deadline for having applied to vote. Because, as of THAT date, IF the books had been open, you WOULD be on the rolls the morning of June 2.
There is an additional step the local party will have to take to ensure that a name is not on the list SOLELY because the books are closed. We have to do what the registrar’s office does. Are you a U.S. citizen? That is still a law and is listed on the SBE website. You have to present ID to show that the proof of citizenship and your name/face match. The SBE even asks for your social security number – but we can probably forego that. And you have to show proof of residence in the 51st district where you are registering to vote (this is a utility bill, bank statement, something official in your name at that address.)
I’ve been waiting for someone to figure that out (“We have to do what the registrar’s office does. Are you a U.S. citizen? That is still a law and is listed on the SBE website. You have to present ID to show that the proof of citizenship and your name/face match. The SBE even asks for your social security number – but we can probably forego that. And you have to show proof of residence in the 51st district where you are registering to vote (this is a utility bill, bank statement, something official in your name at that address.”). Good job anon! And you’re right about the SSN…a legal, non-citizen alien can get one those as well.
Anke, we’ve been saying all along that the credentials committee should require proof of residency and citizenship in order to verify that a person who filed for registration is likely to end up registered.
I don’t think the committee got to that point yet, because they got hung up on picking an arbitrary cutoff date.
I’ve heard with motor-voter that you can walk into the registrar’s office and sometimes come out registered. But I think if they had decided last week that all forms had to be filed by last friday at 5pm, it would have probably been acceptable. I would imagine all the delegates are being told to file as quickly as possible.
If they set the date as may 21st, that will be unfair, as the delegates at THAT time did not know a new arbitrary deadline would be imposed. Imposing deadlines after-the-fact is not the answer.
I’m betting if they allowed until next tuesday at 5pm, and required those who “file for registration” to show the credentials committee a drivers licence or other proof of residence, and a birth certificate, passport, or other proof of citizenship, everybody would be happy except those who want to restrict delegates who they think will vote for Gill. I certainly don’t want non-citizens to vote.
You can’t make the rules as you go along Charles…there will always be consequences. I’ve never seen a Republican Committee so determined to get away with exactly that and, if they do, the Republican Party will get exactly what they deserve.
Anke, I’m arguing to follow the rules as specified in the RPV plan. Others are arguing to set arbitrary deadlines, to ignore the RPV plan rules, or to adopt a lot of extra steps that some delegate candidates have to go through.
I’ve put up the RPV response at my blog. They explicitly state that, if we were having a mass meeting for a precinct because a precinct had an over-filing of delegates, that the cutoff date for those delegates to “apply for registration” would by June 1st, 2007.
However, they also argued that, since we didn’t need the mass meetings, the cutoff date should be May 21. I disagree, but it is clear they are trying to follow rules, and not “make things up”. My argument is that if June 1st is clearly the cutoff in some circumstances, it should be the cutoff date in all circumstances. Imagine if some precincts had mass meetings, and some didn’t — you’d have some delegates who could apply for registration through june 1, and others who were rejected if they didn’t apply before may 21.
At least the RPV has issued a response, so we don’t have to hear complaints that the decision was tainted.