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Last night's shitshow of an #RVA Electoral Board meeting sure piqued my interest. Who are these people, where did they come from, and why can't they run a meeting? Join me down the rabbit hole!
#Thread
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https://twitter.com/BossRVA/status/1356432753647112192
#Thread
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https://twitter.com/BossRVA/status/1356432753647112192
First, some background. Each VA city/county has Registrar - a paid bureaucrat (that's not a bad thing) who runs elections for ALL levels of office - local, state, national. These folks are super-important and make sure we have a functioning democracy
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The Registrar is technically supervised by local Electoral Board. 3 voters from the city/county are appointed by the chief judge of the local Circuit Court (in RVA, that's guy named WR Marchant) So who gets appointed? Well that's needlessly complicated
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title24.2/chapter1/article3/
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https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title24.2/chapter1/article3/
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Electoral Boards are partisan! 2 members are from same party as Governor, and 1 from the other party. Why? Because parties are an important mechanism for governance and an essential part of.... hahaha, nah, JK, it's because the game is rigged, of course
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Electoral Boards are paid! Not much, though - state sets $ based on population. In RVA, around $9K for whoever gets chosen as the secretary, and half that for the other 2 members, plus "expenses" (probably mileage, copying, etc.)
https://budget.lis.virginia.gov/item/2020/1/HB30/Introduced/1/87/
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https://budget.lis.virginia.gov/item/2020/1/HB30/Introduced/1/87/
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It's not an easy job. Electoral Boards have to follow the guidelines set by the State Electoral Board - all laid out in a GIANT handbook, which is massive fun for PDF nerds like me
https://www.elections.virginia.gov/grebhandbook/
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https://www.elections.virginia.gov/grebhandbook/
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And who are those folks? Jim Nachman is a lawyer in private practice; Joyce King is an IT professional. Republican member Starlet Stevens, who has been on the Board since at least 2015, has some shall-we-say interesting views on voting
https://twitter.com/RVAdirt/status/1356369399201091585?s=20
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https://twitter.com/RVAdirt/status/1356369399201091585?s=20
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Members get 3 year terms, staggered so that a new person appointed each year. Parties are supposed to submit a list of 3 possible candidates to the judge each year by Dec. 15, and the judge picks from that list
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And it looks like it's the local party org that makes these recommendations. You may remember #RVADems under new leadership who - while being diplomatic - are certainly going to be taking a hard look at their appointments this year and next
https://twitter.com/nolanjd/status/1356401610830860289?s=20
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https://twitter.com/nolanjd/status/1356401610830860289?s=20
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REMINDER: gov boards & commissions do highly technical work w/o public scrutiny. Typically only hear about them when they screw up - like last night. Let's hope the Electoral Board is strengthened by this attention - elections are kinda important!
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