Virginia County Election Official Resigns Amid Dispute

Voters in Virginia's 7th District wait in line to vote at the Henrico County Registrar’s office in Henrico, Va., on Sept. 18, 2020. Win McNamee/Getty Images

MANASSAS, Va.—The top election official in one of Virginia’s biggest counties resigned earlier this month, less than a year after he took the job, citing health concerns and a dispute between political parties and the electoral board.

Eric Olsen, the registrar of Prince William County, said he would stay through the current election.

“The deciding factor in my decision is serious health concerns that I need to focus on at present,“ Olsen wrote in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. ”They have been exacerbated by the highly partisan environment in which we currently find ourselves and a lack of support for people who do this work.”

A Virginia law gives local political parties oversight into who serves as election officers. For the first time in decades, each party has balanced representation overseeing polling places, Olsen said, although party officials are pushing for more.

Prince William County, with more than 300,000 registered voters, is an important battleground for both parties, as a majority in Congress likely hangs in the balance. Most of the voters are in the 7th Congressional District, where the race of Democrat incumbent Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican challenger Yesli Vega is highly competitive. Some voters reside in the 10th Congressional District, where Republican nominee Hung Cao takes on Democratic incumbent Rep. Jennifer Wexton.

Bipartisan Letter on Party Designation

On Sept. 22, Denny Daugherty, the county’s Republican Party chair, and Tonya James, Democratic chair of the county, jointly requested an emergency meeting to address party designation issues. Per the board’s decision on Sept. 9, the two parties vetted the election officers who applied after February. And they also wanted to review the list approved on Feb. 3, but were told by Olsen that the list was final, according to the joint letter.

“We submit that the law contemplates the determination of party affiliation ... is committed to the parties,” the joint letter said.

Instead of granting the meeting request, the board responded that they would discuss the issue at the next board meeting on Oct. 7, and Olsen announced his resignation during that meeting. He said he obtained his medical diagnosis in between the last two board meetings.

A day before the meeting, Gary Lawkowski, an attorney representing the Prince William County Republican Committee, issued a letter to the electoral board expressing concern over precinct chiefs and assistant chiefs.

“It is a fundamental principle of freedom of association that political parties themselves, not government bureaucrats, get to decide who represents them,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.

“State law calls for the chief and assistant chief election officers to be representatives of the two major political parties whenever feasible. The Registrar should follow the law rather than asking citizens to rely on the assurances of government officials that people who repeatedly voted in Democratic primaries are actually Republicans.”

On Oct. 5, the Virginia Department of Election (ELECT) reissued a 2019 guidance and advised local election offices to ensure that they disallow individuals to self-designate party affiliations.

“Also keep in mind that neither an individual nor electoral board can designate a party affiliation, even if an individual has historically represented a specific party or indicated a willingness to represent either party,” according to the advisory.

Daugherty proposed replacing assist chiefs in 29 precincts with Republicans so that no precincts would have both leaders from the same political party, a nonaffiliated (assistant) chief when a Republican was available, or self-identified Republicans whose affiliation he wouldn’t endorse. The county has 103 precincts in total.

“I’m not trying to get an advantage for Republicans or Democrats. I am trying to make sure that the election is an honest one,” Daugherty told The Epoch Times.

Party Parity on Election Officers

Daugherty said he appreciated that Olsen recruited more Republican election officers by inviting those who voted in the Republican primaries in May and June to apply.

According to Olsen, the county had, in 2020, 466 Democrat election officers and 201 Republicans. This year, the numbers are 399 for Democrats and 402 for Republicans. He said, “I think we are meeting the standards of the law better than any time in decades because of targeted recruitment efforts to equalize our partisan representation, despite little support from the party.”

To Olsen, the experience of election officers takes priority.

“Assigning individuals with no election experience to leadership positions endangers fair, accurate, and honest elections.  It is one of the reasons the Virginia Code specifically states ‘when practicable’ over and over again,” he old The Epoch Times in an email. 

“I am responsible for the election.  I take that job extremely seriously as a nonpartisan official governed by a bipartisan board.”

Daugherty agreed with the overall parity achievement but wanted to see parity among precinct leaders. To respect Olsen’s consideration over experience, Daugherty proposed that Republicans replace assistant chiefs and not chiefs, who run the election at each polling place.

Given that all election officers only work one day a year on Election Day, Daugherty was comfortable with training his nominated election officers to take the responsibility of assistant chiefs.

This election is the first time Virginia allows same-day voter registration and the second year that no ID is required to vote. In Daugherty’s view, these new rules make the parity issue more important for securing a fair election.

Clara Belle Wheeler, a senior fellow with the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, a conservative advocacy group, told The Epoch Times that the local bipartisan agreement was “amazing.”

“What happened in Prince William is that they got more chiefs as Democrats than Republicans, and they had polling places where the chief and the assistant chief election officers were both from the same party. And the Democrat and the Republican chairs agree that’s not right, and they need to change it,” he said.

Wheeler has decades of election experience and was on the Virginia State Board of Elections (SBE) from 2015 to 2018. She says the regular operation for getting precinct chiefs and assistant chiefs ready is to start with mandatory training for these leadership positions only. It’s normal to shift assignments during the training period, she added.

Then, the leaders are encouraged to join the following election officer training sessions to meet with the poll workers in their precincts. The minimum number of election officers at each precinct required by Virginia code is three, Wheeler said. In a large precinct, a chief may manage a dozen election officers.

The Prince William County Office of Elections confirmed with The Epoch Times that this year’s chief and assistant chief training would span multiple sessions between Oct. 12 and 29.

Campaign signs outside the Fairfax County Government Center, a main early voting site, in Fairfax, Va., on Oct. 7, 2022. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Next Steps

Democratic chair James told the Virginia Mercury that she felt the concerns were valid but didn’t see the urgency to address them in the current election cycle, just a few weeks from Election Day.

As for the next steps, Olsen said in an email, “I’m awaiting instruction from my Board regarding any changes to our staffing.”

In Wheeler’s view, the county has sufficient time to change chief and assistant chief assignments as these election officers only work on Election Day on Nov. 8. She said SBE should put the issues on the agenda for discussion in a public meeting. Still, she didn’t expect the current SBE to take any action.

Daugherty said he had encouraged the county electoral board chair London Steverson, also a Republican, to seek an opinion from the Virginia attorney general’s (AG’s) office. In early September, Attorney General Jason Miyares announced the establishment of a new election integrity unit of 20 attorneys, investigators, and paralegals from his office.

Wheeler said the current SBE wouldn’t provide any guidance. She thought the new election integrity unit in the AG’s office was a “wonderful idea.”

“I know that many election law questions need to be answered by the AG’s Office. They need an official opinion,” she said.

Steverson, SBE, and the AG’s office didn’t respond by press time to The Epoch Times’ inquiries.

This article was updated to include further comments from Olsen.