Old Dominion News

With allegations of voter suppression, the Virginia NAACP is seeking records surrounding the recently created Election Integrity Unit in Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office.

Robert Barnette, president of the Virginia NAACP, told WTVR that “there is a probability that when you bring on prosecutors for voting, it intimidates people, intimidates especially people of color. When maybe they're not sure whether they can vote or not, and if they do go ahead and vote, they may be arrested and prosecuted.”

National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative Ken Cuccinelli says the NAACP's action is “an anti-election integrity stunt” taken because of the Democratic Party’s “declining support among minority voters.”

“Unfortunately, the Virginia Chapter of the NAACP seeks to abandon its historic protection of voting rights in favor of its preferred left-wing election outcomes,” Cuccinelli, former Virginia Attorney General, told Old Dominion News. “The reality is that elections are setting records for diversity and turnout. Never before has it been easier to register and vote than it is today for voters of all types. That’s a measure of progress of which we should all be proud.”

Miyares created the integrity unit in mid-September to “provide advice, support, and resources to ensure that Virginia election law continues to be applied in a uniform manner, and increase confidence in our state elections," according to a statement from his office.

Similar charges of voter suppression were made after some states enacted election reform laws after the 2020 general election, where the use of mail ballots exploded during the pandemic. In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping election reform bill in March 2021. It added, among other changes, a voter ID requirement for mail ballots. 

President Joe Biden called the new law “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” referring to the voter suppression laws in the early 20th Century that were popular in some states. The Department of Justice sued Georgia over the law.

Republican members of the U.S. House Administration Committee urged Biden to apologize for his earlier comments.

"In the interest of ensuring American voters may have confidence in elections processes and outcomes, we demand you immediately cease spreading election misinformation, rescind your previous statements, and apologize to the American public," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Biden obtained first by the Washington Examiner.

Cuccinelli said that real voter suppression occurred in Virginia when in 1902 the commonwealth’s Constitution imposed poll taxes, literacy tests and even a civics test as hurdles to voter registration and voting, “all intended to deny as many black citizens access to voting as possible.”

“That same constitution also employed devices to allow illiterate whites onto the voter rolls,” he said.