Fairfax County

Swing State Project sees tomorrow's special election to fill Rep. Gerry Connelly's seat as a proxy fight and preview of the fall Republican and Democratic gubenatorial match up:

If the Dem wins, I expect we'll see all kinds of competing claims over who deserves credit. Of course, the GOP will just say that the Dems should have won, and they'd be right - Fairfax went 60-39 for Obama. On the other hand, a loss or even a close call will lead to predictable recriminations and give Virginia Republicans a dose of momentum they certainly don't deserve. Regardless of who wins our gubernatorial primary, that's something the Dems can't afford.

There is, potentially, another interpretation. Perhaps it is a proxy fight between Tim Kaine and Michael Steele. Certainly the VA GOP is at a low point (hopefully). But the VA Democratic Party should be riding high, and Tim Kaine, both the Dem governor of Virginia and Chairman of the DNC, would suffer a huge black eye from a GOP victory, which is not out of the question.

In January, an 80-20 district, District 46, was won by the Democrats by only 16 votes. This may be found to be the beginning of the end of one of the Democratic candidates for governor:

This is a bad sign for Brian Moran and Alexandria Democrats no matter what the end result is, this is one of the most democratic districts in the state (75% for Obama, 80% for Warner, and 73% for Kaine) and the margin is razor thin!

We have a chance tomorrow to scalp another Democrat and help Pat Herrity pull this off. Michael Steele would get to go on TV and claim that "the comeback starts now" with him.

It would be a great symbolic rallying moment for the GOP and a wonderful way to start Steele's chairmanship. 

Here's a real life example of how choosing candidates at a convention instead of through primaries hurts GOTV efforts.

Next Tuesday, Fairfax County, Virginia will hold a special election to replace new Rep. Gerry Connolly as chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. The Republican candidate is Pat Herrity.

I'll be out of town, so I requested an absentee ballot, which came in the mail yesterday. That same day, I got a hand addressed piece of AB Chase mail from the Fairfax County Democrats, along with one anti-Herrity mailer from the DPV and mail from a third party candidate running on a platform of low taxes.

What's wrong with this picture? Two mail pieces from Democrats, one a hand-addressed AB chase piece. One from an independent low-tax candidate, who for all I know, could be a Republican (we don't have party listed on our ballots for county offices -- causing confusion if you don't have a sample ballot from your county committee).

Why do I get more Democratic mail than Republican mail? On a couple of occasions, I have availed myself of the opportunity to help select the Democratic nominee when we had no contested primary. But I have also voted in Republican primaries, including the extremely low-turnout VA-8 primary last year.

The bottom line: There is no reason that as a past primary voter who is a supervoter in both primaries and generals should not be getting Republican mail. I also got very little GOTV mail from Republicans in the general election last year -- though I did get robocalls from John McCain in the primary.

A big part of the problem: here in Virginia we select many of our nominees by conventions, instead of primaries, lowering our potential GOTV universe -- especially in critical situations like a special general election in the middle of February when a good turnout operation could flip the executive office in a Democratic-leaning county.

There seems to be a problem with military absentee votes in Fairfax, Virginia. From A Soldier's Perspective:

The Fairfax County Registrar—and possibly other Registrars in Virginia—is rejecting most Federal Write-in Absentee Ballots (FWAB) cast by our men and women in uniform.

The FWAB is a federally mandated write-in ballot that allows military servicemembers and their dependents to cast an absentee ballot when they have not received a ballot before the election. It is a safety net that allows a servicemember to vote even if the mail truck hasn't reached his or her remote base in Iraq or Afghanistan in time to cast a regular absentee ballot.

I have talked to several people involved in this process. They are not in fact, yet, rejecting the absentee ballots. They have not been counted and are picking a procedure for doing it. And the current procedure would result in rejecting military absentees.

The basic idea is that if military voters do not get their absentee ballots in time, they can fill out a "Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot" that all election officials are required by federal law to accept. Virgina's instructions are here. The ballot is here.

The position of the Fairfax Registrar is that the sealed (outside) envelope has to be witnessed. The thing is that there is no location to witness, and the instructions are unclear.

Furthermore, this is in violation of the US law, which pre-empts in this case. ASP continues:

Federal law does not allow this type of disparate treatment of servicemembers. The Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act (UOCAVA), 42 U.S.C. § 1973ff-2, requires states to process FWABs "in the manner provided by law for absentee ballots in the State involved." (emphasis added). In other words, the FWAB must be treated like any other absentee ballot under state law and may not be subject to more restrictive requirements. Yet that is precisely what is being done here.

No other kind of absentee ballots are required to be witnessed in Virginia. So the county registrar is improperly implementing federal law and "suppressing" the military vote.

Two final points:

First, I look forward to the squealing from the lefty groups. Somehow, I predict silence.

Second, there was a solution to these problems proposed earlier. Rep. Kevin McCarthy introduced HR 5673 to expedite the delivery of military absentee ballots. The unions opposed. Here was the operative bit, where they complain about the private sector:

NAPUS is deeply concerned about HR 5673, particularly the provision that sanctions private contractor conveyance of overseas and military ballots.

When the unions opposed the measure, all actions stopped in the House. Nancy Pelosi and Chairman Robert Brady (also chairman of that pristine Philadelphia Democratic Party, whose Secretary has been convicted multiple times of violating election laws) didn't seem to care about preserving voting rights. Somehow, putting unions ahead of voting rights will be a pattern in the Democratic House.