This is what election crime — and punishment — looks like in Virginia

Voter fraud is not an abstract concept, it occurs and violates state law. Election-related crimes can take a variety of forms and have long been prosecuted throughout Virginia.

Through an extensive data request, Radio IQ discovered what these crimes look like.

The oldest case found began in 2003 and involved a Senate candidate in Loudoun County who was accused of making false statements on campaign finance forms. Of the seven original charges, only one survived – willful failure to file an election report.

Another former Prince William County Senate candidate in 2005 was accused of failing to meet residency requirements. One of his two charges was ruled resolved and the other was dropped by prosecutors.

In 2019, a national voter registration organizer was arrested for submitting false registrations. She was found guilty on all counts.

The 680 voter fraud charges recorded in state court records since 2004 and reviewed by Radio IQ targeted 283 people from Accomack to Wythe counties — and across party lines. Not all records were available, including those from Fairfax County, because they are not included in the Virginia Supreme Court database.

However, available data shows the impact of enforcing these laws, even when groups claim that Virginia and other states are not implementing them.

According to the data, around half of the almost 700 indictments ended in guilty verdicts. The rest were found not guilty, not cleared, or abandoned by the prosecution.

Hans von Spakovsky leads the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He is among critics who say election laws are inadequately enforced at the state and federal levels.

“I found that they don’t want to enforce the laws against foreigners voting,” he said. “
“They have the attitude that there's nothing wrong with doing it, even though it's against the law and they're just not interested.”

Spakovsky has tracked hundreds of voter fraud cases across the country for Heritage and pointed to data from the Public Interest Legal Foundation that he said showed thousands of noncitizen voters who could have voted in Virginia's election. And as far as Spakovsky can tell, they never contacted local authorities.

“This problem is simply ignored,” he said.

Records reviewed by Radio IQ show that the Virginia State Police, the Virginia Attorney General's Office and local authorities are involved in such investigations. In a statement, a VSP spokesman said election-related complaints would be referred to agents in the General Investigation Section, adding: “Complaints can come from anywhere, the public, a registrar, a Commonwealth Attorney, etc.”

In a statement, the Virginia Association of Commonwealth's Attorneys said its members will review the results of this investigation and “determine whether charges are appropriate.”

Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Ramin Fatehi has been a prosecutor there for more than a decade and formerly headed the election investigations unit. He couldn't speak to all 126 charges found in Radio IQ's data request in Norfolk, but he said most of the cases involved felons who mistakenly registered to vote.

“The fact that there are cases of voter fraud in Virginia means that the system is working and we can have confidence in the results,” Fatehi said.

The recent allegations that non-citizens voted in Virginia are a unique example of why election crimes are less likely to be investigated.

The Fairfax County registrar reported nearly 800 suspected noncitizen registrations to local commonwealth's attorney Steve Descanso earlier this month. In a memo, Descanso said it is not a crime to respond to a registry office request – the basis for removing a suspected non-citizen from the rolls. And as mentioned in previous reports, it is equally difficult to prove intentional intent to defraud.

This division between political expectations about what voter fraud is and the actual reasons for prosecution leaves some gray areas. But Fatehi does not believe this is evidence that thousands of non-citizens are voting illegally.

“We would deal with the crimes depending on what the crimes were and who the people were,” Fatehi told Radio IQ.

In particular, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares addressed election-related crimes early in his term by establishing an Election Integrity Unity. The only prosecution she brought involved claims against a Prince William County registrar that were later dropped. She is now suing the AG for malicious prosecution.

The Election Integrity Unit has referred some other cases to local prosecutors, but Miyares' office would not elaborate on the unit's work or the current investigation. Miyares' office also did not comment on the 800 Fairfax County registrations that were also turned over to the AG's office.

Still, election crimes can occur from both sides of the justice system.

Last year, a Nelson County man voted early and then tried to vote in person a second time at his local precinct. Charges were filed and a trial was held. He was only found this week not guilty by a jury of his peers after he argued that he was trying to test the system.

This report provided by Virginia Public Radiowas made possible with the support of Virginia Education Association.