This story was reported and written by VPM News.
A former election official is suing the Virginia attorney general, saying his office maliciously prosecuted her for political purposes. The lawsuit is at least the fourth Virginia elections-related lawsuit ahead of the 2024 election.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, was announced by Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by former Obama administration officials that describes itself as “cross-ideological.”
Michele White, a former Prince William County elections official, alleges that an investigation by the office of Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares “was not to uncover the truth but to set in motion a prosecution that would provide an opportunity for the public launch of their Election Integrity Unit.”
In September 2022, months after assuming office, Miyares created the unit and characterized it as delivering on a campaign promise. He assigned 20 lawyers to the effort.
That same month, a grand jury indicted White on charges of “making a false material statement or entry required by law, corrupt conduct as an elected official and willful neglect of duties,” according to her lawsuit.
Prosecutors dropped the charges, saying that witness testimony fell apart. The Associated Press reported prosecutors “insinuated” a county elections official revised their testimony.
In the lawsuit, White alleges that two OAG financial investigators deliberately misled a jury by saying she internally changed the county’s absentee voter data.
During White’s trial in January, Prince William County announced that it had released election data indicating former President Donald Trump had “incorrectly received” 2,327 votes in the 2020 election. It said those errors were “likely due to a lack of proper planning, a difficult election environment, and human error.”
The two investigators are named as defendants in White’s lawsuit — as is Joshua N. Lief, an assistant attorney general who co-led the EIU but resigned in May 2023, a spokesperson previously told the Virginia Mercury.
When prosecutors dropped the last remaining charges against White later in January, the AP reported the case was the only criminal prosecution brought by the EIU.
The unit did win a case against Look Ahead America, Inc., an organization headed by a former Trump campaign official that Miyares said issued false and intimidating flyers in Northern Virginia.
In September, VPM News asked an OAG spokesperson about the frequency of election fraud in Virginia, and if there were other election-related matters that the OAG has had a role in. The spokesperson said, “We are not in a position to comment or speculate on issues pertaining to legal matters.”
White is seeking a public acknowledgement that her rights were violated, as well as compensatory and punitive damages.
"This lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law," an OAG spokesperson wrote in an email to VPM News. "The Attorney General's office looks forward to defeating this case in court."
Lawsuits are becoming an increasingly common venue for election disputes as Republican politicians raise the specter of noncitizen voting across the country and in Virginia, where there’s little evidence to support the claim.
In August, Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order reiterating Virginia’s voter registration list maintenance processes and making it occur more frequently.
Miyares is one of seven defendants named in a lawsuit filed by three Virginia civic groups alleging those processes are illegal under the National Voter Registration Act. The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Virginia making similar arguments.
In the executive order, Youngkin wrote, “according to data from ELECT, between January 2022 and July 2024, records indicate we removed 6,303 non-citizens from the voter rolls.”
An administration official later clarified that figure indicates transactions, not necessarily the number of people. The official also said that a single person — whether a noncitizen or citizen — could have indicated they were a noncitizen during that time period.
The OAG has not prosecuted any noncitizens for voting, a spokesperson said.
Two members of Waynesboro’s electoral board also are suing the state electoral board to hand-count ballots and have threatened to not certify election results.
Copyright 2024 VPM
