State Central Votes for Election Integrity at the Convention

written by Guest Contributor Steven 'Doc' Troxel April 24, 2021

The State Central Committee (SCC) of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) met again Thursday night to take up further business regarding the May 8 convention.

Immediately following the opening activities and auxiliary organization reports, Chairman Anderson took us into executive session to discuss some fiscal and “other proprietary Party matters.” I think everyone on SCC came out of executive session pleased with what we heard in the session.

Then we got into convention related business. A section of Article XII – the emergency amendment under which we are conducting business during this season of Covid – allows the SCC to give an additional polling location each to Chesterfield, Fairfax, Henrico, or Loudoun counties or the cities of Chesapeake or Virginia if they have over 1200 delegates sign up in their units. Chesterfield County, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach each asked for an extra polling location. The other listed units did not. I might add that Fairfax has more registered delegates than any of those three units, but they have figured out how to handle their entire unit in a single location. Go figure. Because it was already established in Article XII, the motion to add those polling locations required only a majority vote.

I have a fundamental objection to allowing a single unit to vote in multiple locations, which is what is now planned for Chesterfield. I also believe fewer locations is better for election integrity. I voted against it for those reasons but was on the wrong side of the 42-27 vote to approve. RPV must be very careful to ensure there are no voting irregularities in any situation where delegates from a single unit will be checking in at multiple locations.

Next, SCC considered proposed Party Plan amendments to allow the Second, Third, and Fourth Congressional Districts to have an additional two, one, and two polling locations respectively beyond the generous allotment of locations they already had. For example, District 2 encompasses 1080 square miles and was allotted five polling locations while District 5 with ten times the geographical area at over 10,000 square miles was only allotted four locations. In order to pass, the motions needed a 75 percent approval. None of the three proposals received more than a 55 percent approval vote.

The final amendment we considered would have added a new paragraph to Article XII that reads “The State Central Committee may provide for delegates whose religious obligations prevent them from voting during the convention to cast ballots in the same manner as Military Members.” The stated intent was to allow Orthodox Jews to vote in our convention via absentee ballot because they are not allowed to vote on the Sabbath (Saturday).

I would be delighted to have everyone join us in making a better America, but I’ve been around long enough to know that last minute decisions often have unintended consequences. For that reason, when someone moved to refer the Amendment to the Party Plan committee, I spoke in favor of doing so in order to allow the committee to look at all the ramifications of such an action. Hopefully, the committee would look at all the potential consequences of the amendment and offer alternate language to mitigate any unintended and unwanted results.

That’s when things became a bit heated. One member declared that anyone who voted to refer the amendment to committee, never mind actually vote against it, had no place in the Republican Party. I forgive that individual – new to the committee – for the insulting language because that person has not yet had to deal with some of the unintended consequences we have faced in my tenure on SCC and in other areas and responsibilities in life.

The amendment would also open the door for absentee balloting at the convention. Considering the issues with absentee ballots we had during the November election, that is something that requires careful consideration and implementation. Two weeks prior to a convention with dozens of voting locations and thousands of delegates is not the time to start. The motion to refer to committee failed, 32-40. The amendment itself failed by 20 percentage points

So despite what you might hear, SCC did not disenfranchise any voters. SCC maintained the integrity of the convention election process at a time when election integrity needs all the help it can get.

State Central Committee on Convention 2021

Guest Contributor Steven 'Doc' Troxel

Steve "Doc" Troxel. Ph.D., taught at Liberty University for over two decades. He is an award winning videographer and a published author who writes both fiction and non-fiction articles and books. He has served in leadership positions in several community organizations and was formerly Chairman of the local board of Central Virginia Community College. Doc has served as Chairman of the Lynchburg Republican Committee and formerly a representative from the Sixth Congressional District to the State Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia.

State Central Votes for Election Integrity at the Convention

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