OPINION:
The Virginia gubernatorial race between Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe is being watched intently across the nation. What started as a foregone conclusion of a victory for the Democrat has now sent shockwaves of fear through its national ranks that Mr. Youngkin may likely win. However, lying underneath the enormous public attention of this race lurks a more pressing matter for Mr. Youngkin’s team. The potential for election tampering.
The prospect of such an unexpected election outcome has driven Team McAuliffe to the precipice of desperate acts and despair. Sounding the celebrity alarm, Mr. McAuliffe brought numerous high-profile figures recently to the election frontlines. Barak Obama, Jill Biden, and Stacey Abrams are just a few of the headline names attempting to rescue Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign and their Party’s reputation. A barrage of deceptive ads has blanketed TV, radio and social media outlets.
The totality of these events, no doubt, is being closely monitored by Mr. Youngkin’s campaign. Yet his most tenuous challenge on election day does not lie with winning the election but rather protecting the result.
The anticipation of potential election irregularities is deeply embedded in the minds of voters. The events following the 2020 presidential election controversy are still raw and led to substantial division in our country. This is precisely why Mr. Youngkin must have a formidable plan to counter any subterfuge by the Democrats and protect the outcome.
Here are five essential provisions that his “protect the vote” plan must include.
1. Mr. Youngkin and his team must be proactive in any and all election protection efforts.
Historically, campaigns are vastly unprepared and ill-equipped to manage the intensity and volume of election-day irregularities. The lack of preparation leads to a chaotic process.
Following Election Day in 2020, the Trump campaign identified numerous alleged voting violations. However, many of its claims could not be validated due to insufficient evidence. Had the campaign been more prepared and started gathering evidence of identified fraud earlier, it could have more aggressively contested parts of the results. Instead, the clock ran out.
Mr. McAuliffe knows this all too well. He is well-versed in scorched earth campaign tactics to win at all costs. This month alone, he spent close to $60,000 to hire Marc Elias, a Clinton loyalist and legal expert at contesting election results. Bringing on such a high-profile election attorney is a clear sign that Mr. McAuliffe fully intends to challenge the result if it does not go his way.
2. Election violations occur through deliberate acts and unintentional mistakes. Mr. Youngkin must have a fully trained election integrity team in place and deployed across the state to ensure every vote is counted and reported properly.
The sheer volume of issues that typically arise on election day requires the involvement of dozens of expert election lawyers, trained poll watchers, volunteers, and coordination by precinct and/or county election staff. Given the importance of this election, the presence of external election monitors would substantially bolster confidence in the result.
Human intervention will always result in unanticipated issues despite numerous advances in election processes over the last several years. Mistakes will be made. Ballots might be errantly processed twice. Or individuals that registered for an absentee ballot may forget and vote in person. A proactive team will enable Mr. Youngkin’s campaign to quickly assess the veracity of election violations, determine if there is a cure, and take appropriate legal action if necessary.
Vote tampering is a serious threat to our democracy and undermines the belief that every vote counts. Yet, it is a blunt reality given the inherent flaws within our electoral process.
3. Prepare for suspicious and deliberate changes to local precinct and county voting regulations. Any attempts by counties to change the rules during the election are illegal.
County and precinct election officers wield considerable power. Left unchecked, changes can be made to voting procedures that will impact the result.
Fairfax County was sued earlier this month for allowing 300 absentee ballot registrations to be processed without including the last four digits of a voter’s social security number, required by state law. Mr. Youngkin’s team will face myriad scenarios like this one before and during election day.
4. All election infractions across the state need to be reported in real-time, segmented according to their severity and centralized in the campaign’s war room.
Assessing the veracity of reported violations is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Mr. Youngkin must identify and address any suspicion of fraud quickly. The time the law prescribes to raise objections is minimal. This is why he must have a competent team of experts on the ground in as many polling locations as possible. Unfortunately, an audit is permitted in Virginia’s electoral law, but only after the vote count is certified. This is disturbing. It means that the audit cannot affect the election result.
5. Finally, given the stakes of this election, it is inevitable that the voting process will devolve into a war of words. It has already started.
Campaigns are notorious for impacting an election through public statements attempting to encourage or dissuade voter participation. TargetSmart, a liberally backed data firm, announced that Mr. McAuliffe is ahead based on early vote tallies this week. This is a brazen and demonstrably misleading statement. It was done to energize McAuliffe supporters. The harsh reality is that his campaign is struggling to turn out his vote. Even top Democrats acknowledge this fact. A review of the early vote numbers for Chesapeake, Hampton and Newport News substantiates it. All of these counties are traditionally Democratic strongholds that are underperforming dismally.
Mr. Youngkin needs to aggressively motivate his base to get out and vote, now and on election day. He must continue to appeal to undecideds and moderates that will give him his victory. The more he can control and impact the narrative through election day, the easier it will be to protect his win.
As Americans, we want to be confident that our elections are free and fair. It is an ideal to which we should all aspire. Until that day comes, if I were Mr. Youngkin, I would make every effort and deploy every measure in my arsenal twice over to protect my vote and victory.
• Rick Gates has worked for 25 years in political campaigns in both the US and internationally. He served as the Deputy Chairman to President Trump’s successful 2016 campaign. He is the author of “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost.” @rickwgates.
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