A polling location in Richmond in November 2022. (Sarah Vogelsong / Virginia Mercury)
Richmond’s Republican-majority electoral board recently blundered into a needless controversy over early voting satellite sites. The board had shut down two locations before reversing itself this month following a heated outcry from state and local officials, residents and community activists.
Richmond electoral board reverses itself, votes to open satellite voting sites
The initial decision to shutter the sites even violated state law. Starlet Stevens, Richmond Electoral Board chairwoman and one of two Republicans on the three-person body, told me she had favored saving the $100,000 cost instead of staffing the two centers over 45 days in South Richmond and at City Hall downtown. They’re both along public transit lines and in mainly Black and Latino neighborhoods.
“My only reason was financial,” she told me during an interview Wednesday. “We’re just looking at the big picture.”
True, only a little more than 2,800 people voted in the fall 2022 election at the satellite offices. The city now has 169,000 registered voters, so 2,800 is a small fraction of the total number of registered voters or the typical turnout for elections.
Yet Stevens missed an even bigger picture:
Any time officials in Virginia make it more difficult for Black and Latino citizens to vote, they should expect civil rights groups, advocacy organizations and Democratic Party honchos – who depend on those votes – to howl in response. And with good reason.
They smell voter suppression, even though the Richmond GOP called such accusations “completely false.” Republicans now hold the majority on electoral boards in Virginia since the governor is from that party.
The state’s longtime hostility toward African Americans at the ballot box , however, is well-documented. The mechanism has included poll taxes, literacy tests and the permanent disenfranchisement of felons, who are disproportionately Black. Such enmity has come primarily from conservatives.
FOIA Friday: What Virginia officials withheld or disclosed, July 14–July 21, 2023
Besides, Richmond city officials had said they’d budgeted money in the fiscal year that started July 1 to cover the costs of operating the two satellite sites. Stevens acknowledged the general registrar has more money this year than in previous ones, though she told me she was focused on getting new voting equipment and looking into added security for poll workers.
That’s a poor excuse.
Maybe if the Republican Party’s de facto capo, Donald Trump, hadn’t made such a big stink about early voting, observers wouldn’t be so quick to denigrate GOP motives. In previous years, the former president lambasted early and absentee voting as gateways to widespread fraud, even though he had no proof to support those bogus claims.
Trump recently encouraged Republicans to vote early, though his message has sometimes been muddled, according to news reports. Gov. Glenn Youngkin last month also publicized the benefits of early voting, as he seeks to boost GOP turnout as this fall’s General Assembly elections approach.
‘Stop sitting on the sidelines’: Youngkin pushes GOP to embrace early voting
For Richmond voters, another complication was the 2020 relocation of the general registrar’s office from downtown City Hall to an industrial area on West Laburnum Avenue, in the northern tip of the city. That site allows early voting, too, but it’s not easy to reach for people who rely on public transportation.
“We of course were completely opposed to closing (satellite locations), whether they had the law on their side or not,” Joan Porte, president of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Virginia, told me. “We support equity.”
Jane Newell is with the league’s metro Richmond chapter. She noted the November elections are critical for Southside Richmond voters, since a pending referendum involves a proposed casino-resort in their own community. Having a satellite office to vote early makes it easier for people with more than one job or who don’t have cars, Newell said.
She attended recent electoral board meetings about the issue. “I reminded them the League was very much in favor of satellites in Richmond,” Newell said.
The Richmond board did jettison Sunday voting as Election Day approached. Black churches often touted those Sundays as part of the “Souls to the Polls” initiative, in which they encouraged congregants to use the opportunity to vote early. League of Women Voters officials and folks like Mayor Levar Stoney lamented the decision.
“Ensuring proper access to the ballot box is neither a Democrat nor Republican issue, it’s an American issue,” Stoney said in a statement.
Cost is a factor in opening satellite offices, but it’s not the only one. Voter access, convenience and fairness should take precedence. Especially in a place like Virginia, which has a blatantly biased history regarding enfranchisement.
Surely, Republicans know that.
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Roger Chesley