Last Updated on February 5, 2022
Every single Democrat in Virginia’s House of Delegates voted against an optional voter ID bill passed by House Republicans in a party-line vote.
While the state formerly used universal voter-ID, Democrats, aided in many cases by the GOP establishment, gutted Virginia’s election integrity laws during their recent period of single-party rule, which coincided with the 2020 election and the documentation of historic irregularities in Virginia’s vote count.
Under House Bill 544, introduced by Republican Delegate Amanda Batten, Virginia voters are permitted to “opt-in” to a voter ID program that secures their own personal ballot and prevents fraudsters from voting in their place. Voters who choose to opt-in to the program would present their polling place with a state-issued photo ID before voting, ensuring that they are the only person who has access to their ballot.
Wren Williams, a former Trump election attorney who fought 2020 fraud in Wisconsin before returning to Virginia and unseating his establishment-backed 9th District GOP incumbent, cast the deciding vote on the ballot security measure. In a release to media outlets after the bill passed the House, Williams stressed the importance of election integrity and said his time spent in Wisconsin, fighting for the sanctity of America’s elections in court, drove him to return home and fight to re-secure the vote in the Old Dominion, the birthplace of American democracy.
“A year ago, election integrity was a main reason why I decided to run for office,” Williams said in a press release. “While I was volunteering in Wisconsin for Trump’s legal team, I saw firsthand how rogue bureaucrats gave a pass to illegal ballot harvesting and committed fraud by illegally curing absentee ballots. Something had to be done, so I ran for office. I promised my constituents that I would fight to stop fraud and safeguard our elections here in Virginia. Passing HB544 in the House is our first big step towards fulfilling that promise,” he continued.
Williams went on to say that HB 544 marks only the beginning of his efforts to restore election integrity in Virginia, and that he will “look forward to passing more election integrity legislation, which will go even further to secure our elections and assure voters that our democratic system is trustworthy.”
In 2020, such extensive fraud was seen across the country as election standards in Democrat-controlled states dropped to all-time lows, that numerous voters, including in Virginia, reported arriving at their polling place and being denied a ballot as they were told by election workers that a vote in their name had already been cast.
Regardless, every single Democrat in the Virginia House of Delegates voted against the optional voter ID ballot protection bill, continuing their party’s long-time opposition to even the most basic and noninvasive election integrity and security measures. To make it to Governor Youngkin’s desk and be signed into law, the bill will first have to clear the Virginia State Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority and have promised to form a “brick wall” to stifle debate and stop Republican legislation from making it through the General Assembly’s upper chamber.
