Old Dominion News

Michael Thielen, executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association, recently voiced his opinion on media bias on election coverage after the discovery of nearly 19,000 dead voters on Virginia's voter rolls went largely ignored by the national media in favor of news of election officials being intimidated by "election deniers."

According to an April 24 blog post by Thielen, following a request by the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT), the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) reviewed all death records going back to 1960 and discovered death records that had not been previously shared with ELECT. A further analysis of the death records by ELECT staff identified 18,990 names of registered voters which has been sent to local registrars for further processing. A significant number of names is expected to be removed from Virginia’s voter rolls.

Thielen's blog post goes on to say that the discovery of nearly 19,000 dead voters to be removed from Virginia's voting rolls went completely ignored by the National Media, which instead focused on the Democrat driven narrative of “election deniers” intimidating election officials in states, including Virginia, even though the 2022 election occurred without reports of election officials being intimidated.

Old Dominion News reached out to Thielen to elaborate on the importance of the discovery of the death records on Virginia’s voter rolls.

"Reasonable Democrats and all Republicans agree that removing deceased persons and voters who have moved from a state’s rolls are a key function of the registrars and election officials," Thielen told Old Dominion News. "Marc Elias and other highly partisan anti-democracy Democrats have attacked this as 'purging' and called it racist. However, the reality is list maintenance should not be viewed as partisan as removing deceased voters was one of the top recommendations of President Obama’s Presidential Commission on Election Administration."

Thielen went on to say that the discovery of the nearly 19,000 death records was not widely covered in the media. Instead, for Virginia election news, the national media chose to cover the resignation of a county registrar.  

"That fits the mainstream media’s narrative that election officials are being 'intimidated,'" Thielen said. "However, 19,000 dead people on the voting rolls and the voting lists not having been cleaned up in years is much more impactful to elections in Virginia. The local registrar has little or no impact statewide and the resignation was at a relatively slow time between elections."

Thielen believes that the removal of deceased voters from the rolls will have a significant impact on future elections, especially for Republican candidates. 

"The 19,000 dead impacts future elections and had a potential impact on past elections. It also damages public confidence in our election system," Thielen said. "Voter confidence is hurt when voting lists are not being cleaned up. A lack of voter confidence can impact turnout and it seems Republicans are hurt more than Democrats as shown by the 2021 runoff in Georgia. U.S. Senate control was determined when some Georgia Republicans decided not to vote because of a lack of confidence in the voting system." 

Thielen believes that improperly maintained voter rolls could have a real impact on elections and brought up the 2017 House of Delegates race as an example of the power a single vote can have. The 2017 race for Virginia House District 94 was a tie and was eventually decided by lot, as required by Virginia law.