I wouldn't hold my breath if you want the SBE to investigate election irregularities.

Just in case the RK readers don't recall, Gate City was the locale where the former mayor was convicted on 29 counts of election fraud arising from the May, 2004 election.  We tried for over a year to get the SBE to investigate, or order the local Electoral Board to investigate the conduct of the Scott County elections to no avail.

Problems first became public in the fall of 2003.  Mary Lane the wife of the Democratic candidate for sheriff requested the absentee voter list and Willie May Kilgore refused to provide the information in a timely manner.  Ms. Kilgore then informed Ms. Lane that she was a convicted felon and removed her from the voting rolls.  SBE did get her re-instated so she could vote in 11/03, but refused to investigate the allegations of misconduct.
Ms. Lane now has a lawsuit pending against Ms. Kilgore for defamation.

Then it took a recount and a contest to get the information on the absentee ballots in May, 2004 election.
Only after Mark Jenkins the 'losing' candidate for mayor went before the grand jury, was a special prosecutor appointed.  The only charges that came out of his investigation were the ones against Mr. Dougherty. And again the SBE did nothing.

In Appalachia we had the votes for pork rinds scandal.  And yes, many people were indicted and pled to violations of the election laws, but I'm not aware of any SBE investigation.

Of course Vienna is NOVA.  Maybe they'll get more attention.  Honestly, I hope not.  Because that will just prove to the people down here that the powers in Richmond don't care about us.

Well I seem to be doing a lot of venting this morning.  But I would certainly like to start an online discussion of the voting problems and what we (the grassroots) can do about it.

This is a lot more serious than the Vienna election officials are pretending. They had no legal choice but to remove the lady who committed the illegal act. She had to know that she was violating state law and election regulations since she was experienced, so I can't imagine anyone is buying her claim that she didn't do anything wrong.But the fact that other election officials actually positioned themselves (hovering) where they could have seen how people were voting is a far more serious offense and certainly subject to prosecution. Ignorance of the law, of course, is never an allowable defense; and in this case there can be no question that all the election officials are fully aware of the letter and intent of the law. Every election official MUST get training before they can be selected and sworn in, and the number one priority in the training is to be absolutely certain that election officials fully understand that under no circumstances may they ever be in a position where they can see how a person is voting. And they all know that may never touch anything that would cancel or invalid a vote. IMHO, every single one of the election officials who were observed doing any of these things should have been immediately removed by the chief. And if the chief has been knowingly allowing these offenses to occur the chief should be prohibited from serving again. Further, I think the election officials who have done any of these things could still be subject to civil suits, regardless of whether there was any possibility that these actions could have made any difference in the end result of the election.As I think we all know (you legal experts please correct me if I'm wrong), knowingly violating state law and implementing rules and regulations in ways that could cause a person's vote to be observed and/or result in a ballot that does not represent the voter's intentions could well be considered by a judge to be a violation of criminal statues as well as a violational of a citizen's constitutional right to vote without revealing how they voted (secret ballot). And if by interfering with a person's vote in such a way as to cause the person's vote to not be counted, the election official who did that has effectivley denied the voter his/her constitutional right to vote at all.It's really a shame that towns like Vienna in NOVA don't have partisan elections. That would at least assure that both parties have election officials and observers present at all times so any such irregularities can be challenged and corrected on the spot.And, yes, I think this does affect Virginia voters in other areas, partly because it causes loss of trust in the voting process even to the extent that some just won't vote on the basis that they have no confidence that their vote will count.
  Sorry about the long dissertation. But these incidents in Vienna do serve as a reminder to all of us that we must assure that all election officials are fully trained and and that we always have very vigilant observers during every election. As a precinct captain, this is an important reminder for me that I must assemble and fully train all of my precinct team members in these areas.                              

Respectfully submitted for your comment.                         Tom C.

is obsessed with vote fraud, call him and Gonzales up and ask if these people are going to be served with felony charges.