Conservative Election Activists Use Virginia as a Dry Run for 2024

In 2021, after Republican victories in Virginia, conservative activists were so proud of their work training poll watchers, recruiting election workers and making other attempts to subtly influence the voting system that they wrote a memo called “The Virginia Model.” The memo detailed ways that other states could follow Virginia’s lead in protecting so-called election integrity.

Now these activists are turning their attention back to Virginia, which is a month away from tossup elections that will decide control of the state’s closely divided legislature and offer both national parties clear evidence of their electoral strengths and weaknesses heading into 2024.

Every Tuesday night, Virginia Fair Elections, the group that drafted “The Virginia Model,” holds trainings for poll watchers aligned with its mission and encourages conservative activists to register to work at the polls. The organization also hosts trainings for new members of local election boards.

The trainings are permeated by an undercurrent of mistrust in the electoral system: Poll watchers are encouraged to arrive early and insist on being as close as legally possible to election workers, voters and ballot machines; to make sure to inspect those machines; and to look for any evidence of potential fraud.

“All of us have eyes on,” Clara Belle Wheeler, a former member of the Virginia State Board of Elections who now leads the trainings, said at the end of an hourlong training session for poll watchers last Tuesday, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. “I’m watching.”

The group, like many others across the country, is taking its cues from former President Donald J. Trump, who has continued to make baseless claims that American elections are rigged. Behind the scenes and at public events, conservative activists who share his beliefs have been working to overhaul voting laws and recruit activists and supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers.

In numerous counties and localities across Virginia, conservative activists have been appointed to local election boards, the bodies that are in charge of determining early voting hours and locations, leading some to move early polling locations or reduce voting access on the weekends. The state also withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, an interstate clearinghouse for voter data that helps ensure secure elections, but became a flashpoint on the right based on a widely debunked conspiracy theory.

Democrats and voting rights groups say these moves could have significant consequences — that seemingly small changes and pressures on the system could add up and potentially affect the outcome of an election. They worry that overly aggressive poll watchers could intimidate voters, or that conspiracy-minded Trump supporters who insert themselves in the election process could interfere with the results.

“This is sort of like a death by 1,000 cuts, and there’s no necessarily one thing that you can point to and say, ‘That’s what’s going to swing the election,’” said Aaron Mukerjee, the voter protection director for the Virginia Democratic Party. “Taken together, the goal is to disenfranchise enough voters that they can win the election.”

It is often difficult to determine whether changes to election laws or other attempts to intervene in the voting process ultimately affect outcomes. Turnout alone does not determine how many voters may have been affected. In the Trump era, changes in voting patterns have scrambled the longtime presumption that higher turnout helps Democrats and lower turnout aids Republicans.

And there is no evidence that Republican election activists aided victories in Virginia in 2021, nor that their policies and activities necessarily benefit either party. During that election, poll watchers at 13 voting sites were observed being disruptive, according to reports filed by elections workers.

In the run-up to the 2021 election, activists trained by Virginia Fair Elections collected claims of malfeasance and filed a lawsuit challenging at least 390 ballot applications that were missing Social Security numbers. The suit was dismissed, but conservative news outlets focused on the complaint and began to argue that the coming vote in Virginia would be “stolen,” as many activists believed had happened in 2020. (Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, ended up winning, and his party made gains in the legislature.)

Nonetheless, Republican-aligned groups like Virginia Fair Elections continue to try to tighten voting laws.

Virginia Fair Elections is managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that was formed in 1996 with moderate fund-raising in the low six figures annually. But as the think tank shifted its focus to so-called election integrity efforts after the last presidential contest, it raised over $508,000 in 2021, according to data kept by ProPublica.

That money included a $125,000 grant earmarked for the “Virginia Fair Elections project” from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of groups that have proliferated myths about voter fraud. Its board includes Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

In 2021, the “Virginia Model” executed by Virginia Fair Elections became the blueprint for the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition guided by Ms. Mitchell that quickly became one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit local activists.

Last year, Virginia Fair Elections hosted a two-day gathering conceptualized by Ms. Mitchell. The group boasted of having trained 4,500 poll watchers and election officials, and of covering 85 percent of polling locations in Virginia on Election Day in 2021 and during the 45 days of early voting.

In August, Virginia Fair Elections held a similar meeting at a Sheraton hotel outside Richmond. The daylong event featured 12 discussions, including a keynote speech from Mollie Hemingway, a well-known conservative columnist. A panel discussion held just after lunch highlighted one front in which the network has made significant gains: county election boards and registrars, who serve as the chief election officials in Virginia localities.

“The most important thing we do, however, is the hiring, and sometimes the firing, of the general registrar, and I think just as critical, if not more so, is the appointment, the training and potentially the dismissal of election officers,” John Ambrose, a Republican who serves as the vice chair of the electoral board of Richmond, told the audience to loud applause, according to an audio recording of the panel obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The Times.

Ms. Wheeler and the president of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy did not respond to text messages seeking comment. Virginia Fair Elections did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Under a peculiarity of Virginia law, the party of the most recently elected governor holds the advantage in the partisan makeup of local election boards. After Mr. Youngkin won the governor’s office in 2021, boards across the state flipped to 2-to-1 Republican control from 2-to-1 Democratic control.

Groups like Virginia Fair Elections worked to place people they had trained on local election boards across the state, which meant that in many places, conservative priorities became policy.

At least 10 counties in Virginia, including at least four with predominantly Black populations, have canceled Sunday voting for the coming elections. Some of the 10 counties, among them Richmond, Spotsylvania, Virginia Beach and Chesterfield, contain major population centers.

Sundays are popular voting days for Black communities, where “Souls to the Polls” events led by churches have a long history of fostering community and helping protect against intimidation at the polls.

“Democracy is coming under attack, whether it’s the Republican-led electoral boards throughout different localities who are cutting down on Sunday voting, or even closing early-vote locations that were in predominately Black communities,” said Joshua Cole, a pastor and a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates in the Fredericksburg area. He pointed to the Mattaponi Baptist Association of Virginia, a local association of Black churches, several of which are no longer able to hold Souls to the Polls events.

“Don’t take that right away from Christians, especially African American Christians, when it’s been a staple in the community for years,” he said.

Some local election officials acknowledged that the shift in partisan control was the main cause for the changes.

“The reason Sunday voting is no longer an option for the City of Richmond is because the political representation from our electoral board has changed from Democratic to Republican since 2021,” said Katherin Cardozo-Robledo, the executive assistant to the electoral board in Richmond, a city whose population of about 230,000 is roughly 45 percent Black.

Others, however, said there simply wasn’t enough demand.

“We have elections every November in Virginia, so we did not continue it last year, either,” said Mary Lynn A. Pinkerman, who oversees elections in Chesapeake, which is roughly 30 percent Black. “Our city has approximately 176,000 voters, and when we tried it after being told there would be busloads coming, we only had 170 voters come that day. We do not have enough of a demand for it in our city.”

With just a month left before polls close in Virginia, both parties are focused on the legislative elections, but the conservative activists have larger goals in mind.

“What we’re doing is so critical,” Sheryl Stanworth, an attendee at the Tuesday training, said during the gathering. “We’ve got a presidential election to be looking forward to.”