Turns out that the Republicans, Donald Trump, Jason Miyares, the Virginia attorney general, were right. There were issues with the vote count in 2020, a significant one in Virginia, with one county off by 4,000 votes.
Bad news for MAGA: it was 4,000 votes in Trump’s favor.
“We have worked to bring transparency to the reporting of an election that happened three years ago. This dedication remains and applies to all current and future elections. The public should have faith in the thousands of tireless public servants and volunteers who preserve and protect our democracy,” said Eric Olsen, director of elections in Prince William County, which confirmed on Monday that its review of the 2020 vote count in the county had undercounted votes for Joe Biden and overcounted votes for Trump.
Votes for Trump, according to the review undertaken by the county, had been overcounted by 2,327 votes.
Votes for Biden had been undercounted by 1,648 votes.
There were discrepancies in other races in 2020: Democrat Mark Warner (1,589 votes) and Republican Daniel Gade (107 votes) both had undercounts in the U.S. Senate race, and Republican Rob Wittman (293 votes) was undercounted in his U.S. House race.
“The reporting errors were presumably a consequence of the results tapes not being programmed to a format that was compatible with state reporting requirements,” Olsen said. “Attempts to correct this issue appear to have created errors. The reporting errors did not consistently favor one party or candidate but were likely due to a lack of proper planning, a difficult election environment, and human error.”
The issue in Prince William County was the only one to surface in the review initiated by Miyares in 2022, when the Republican AG formed what he called an Election Integrity Unit and assigned 20 lawyers to the effort to, come on, we all know what he was getting at.
“I pledged during the 2021 campaign to work to increase transparency and strengthen confidence in our state elections. It should be easy to vote, and hard to cheat. The Election Integrity Unit will work to help to restore confidence in our democratic process in the Commonwealth,” Miyares said in a statement back when he launched the unit in 2022.
The Election Integrity Unit brought charges against Michele White, the former registrar in Prince William County, though significantly, the AG’s office never made clear in court documents what it was that White would have done wrong.
We know now the reason for the lack of specificity.
“(T)he evidence is clear that Ms. White did not commit any crimes during her tenure as Registrar in Prince William County, and the Attorney General’s office wisely dropped the charges,” White’s attorney, Zachary Stafford, said in a written statement issued on Jan. 3, after the AG’s office dropped the last of the charges against White in the case.
“This process has been traumatic for Ms. White, and today’s dismissal is just the first step towards recovering from that trauma. Ms. White was a dedicated public servant, and the evidence shows that she conducted an accurate election in 2020,” Stafford said.
That part about the “accurate election” was overstating it, as it turns out, but the final word on this from the Prince William County election office makes clear that the discrepancies weren’t intentional.
The part about how we finally have hard, concrete evidence of a substantial voting discrepancy – 4,000 votes could have gone a long way in the close 2020 state elections in Georgia and Arizona – actually going in favor of not Biden, but Trump, is just, chef’s kiss.
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Chris Graham
