Virginia – the silent battleground

For all the talk about battleground States, and which States Donald Trump (or Kamala Harris) needs to win, one State has become a battleground about which one speaks only in whispers. That State is the Commonwealth of Virginia. Legacy media consistently denies that Virginia is a battleground. So why has the Harris campaign and their allies launched a two-pronged attack to secure it? And why did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. pick Virginia as one of the ten States in which he would withdraw his name from the ballot? The answer is that Virginia is actually two States: a government-employee dormitory community, and a largely rural State with conservative values. As such it is indeed a battleground and always will remain one – until Trump, or someone, downsizes the federal government.

Political facts about Virginia

Virginia has some of the richest history of all the States. One of the Original Thirteen, it also calls itself the Mother of Presidents, because so many Presidents were born there. They include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. It also has the dubious distinction of Mother of States, because Kentucky and West Virginia were once part of it.

Virginia sends eleven Members to the House of Representatives and thus has thirteen Electoral Votes. Beginning in 2008, those votes have gone to Democratic Presidential candidates, by margins varying from four to ten percent. Joe Biden carried Virginia by that ten percent – and what few realize, is that this was an outlier. For that reason, Mike Lindell includes Virginia as a State that fraud helped the Democrats carry in 2020. Furthermore, before Barack Obama carried Virginia, Republicans carried Virginia always, beginning in 1968 with Richard M. Nixon. Nixon also carried Virginia in 1960, and Dwight D. Eisenhower carried the State in both his elections. Before the Election of 1952, Virginia was an almost-reliable Democratic State, with Herbert Hoover and Ulysses S. Grant (1872) the only two Republicans to carry it.

Modern political divisions of Virginia

On Monday (September 9), former State Sen. Amanda F. Chase (R-Chesterfield) released a link to The Virginia Report. (The link she released was to the landing page of Virginia Analytics; the actual report is available at this link.)

That report, dated June 25, 2024, treats the Election of 2020 and why its Democratic margin was such an outlier.

The landing page divides Virginia into two regions: Northern Virginia (NoVa) and The Rest of Virginia (RoVa). Political prognosticators might assume that Northern Virginia – the dormitory community of Washington, D.C. – will carry the day from sheer numbers. But The Virginia Report suggests instead that election fraud pervades all of Virginia, including 123 units in “RoVa.” (In Virginia parlance, a unit is a county or an independent city – because some cities govern themselves apart from counties.)

Nevertheless, Capt. Seth Keshel, U.S. Army (retired), Director of the Election Fairness Institute, suggested a way Donald Trump (or his surrogates) could carry Virginia:

· Target Loudoun, Stafford, and Prince William Counties in NoVa, with a margin of defeat in NoVa as close to -400,000 as possible.

· Work the campaign in RoVa, as was just done with the Chesapeake rally, which if the NoVa target margin if met, will require a margin greater than +400,000 in RoVa to tilt the state. This is only possible if Democrat ballot stuffing in Trump-favorable areas is squashed.

· Flip back Virginia Beach and Chesapeake Counties and hope a substantial gain in the minority vote creates an unexpectedly large shift in margin. Black and Latino voters make up about one-quarter of the voter roll in the state, thereby contributing between 1.0 and 1.1 million ballots, so even a 10% improvement would shift 100,000 in margin. Leon Benjamin, a friend and fighter, knows this better than most and has been hard at work for years spreading the truth.

Virginia currently has a Republican governor, who carried the State because his opponent brazenly declared that parents ought have no say in the education of their children. But two years later came the Abortion Election that put the State’s General Assembly firmly in Democratic hands. Now, “everybody knows” that Virginia is “Likely Democratic,” just as Texas is “Likely Republican.” But the facts are a lot more complex than “everybody knows”!

Three alleged new polls

Yesterday, Tyler Englander, reporting on the smartphone app Newsbreak, said three polls showed Kamala Harris with big leads. Those polls came from The Washington Post, the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Morning Consult. These polls reported Harris up by eight, ten, and ten percent, respectively. (Morning Consult and the Post hide their results behind pay walls.)

Englander quoted Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia as telling Trump to write off Virginia.

This is not going to be close. Donald Trump has never been popular in Virginia and he isn’t now.

That’s false. Trump lost Virginia by a mere four percent in 2016. Again, his loss to Biden by ten points was an outlier. That these polls should stay that close to this outlier, in a State with a Republican governor, makes them suspect. Furthermore, all those pollsters are suspect for their leftist slant. Morning Consult has a grudging “mostly factual” rating and a rating at the left end of “left-center” for bias. (Source: Media Bias Fact Check.) Of The Washington Post, nothing more need be said.

Then Sabato said this, as if to sow confusion:

If the debate is included in the calculus, then you would expect a point of two or three to be added to Harris. She cleaned his clock.

First, none of those three polls reflect any post-debate sampling; all are pre-debate polls. Second, the delayed reaction to the debate is already in. According to that, Harris did not clean anyone’s clock. The only serious reason anyone has to support Kamala Harris is that she would seek to restore the Roe regime of abortion on demand, up to or past the moment of birth, for any reason or no reason.

Ballot access lawfare

Some people must not think releasing three pre-debate “push polls,” then pretending the debate affected them, is enough. Cornel West, running on a platform he calls “Justice for All,” last week collected the signatures he needed to qualify for the ballot in Virginia. Now Marc Elias’ law firm threatens to sue the State if Cornel West stays on the ballot. Technically that firm is writing on behalf of Clear Choice Action, an allegedly independent group. But this does not fool Ballot Access News. They note that Marc Elias is the Democratic Party General Counsel in all but name. Elias acted, apparently, after the Virginia Department of Elections decided at the last minute to list West.

Why should Marc Elias care whether Cornel West is on the ballot or not? Those three push polls suggest that Harris has the State sewn up; Elias’ action belies that. Furthermore, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. formally asked the Department to take his name off the ballot – and they agreed.

Elias’ letter raises the silliest technicality imaginable: that members of West’s slate of elector-candidates hadn’t sworn that they were United States citizens. How does Elias know that West and his team haven’t addressed that deficiency? Answer: he doesn’t. This is lawfare, pure and simple, like that which Ryan Silverstein at Villanova University protested recently in regard to the Green Party candidacy of Jill Stein.

Stuffing the ballot box

The Virginia Report covers only one method of election fraud in Virginia: inflation of the voter rolls. Democrats take advantage of that mainly by requesting, and filling out, mail-in absentee ballots. Impersonating deceased or moved-out voters at check-in is far more difficult, chiefly by reason of the sheer numbers required. Electronic scanner-tabulators present their own vulnerabilities, which others have treated.

Recently Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) reported removing over six thousand noncitizens from the rolls. But by comparison, Texas removed over a million spurious registrations. The overwhelming bulk of those were deceased or had moved out-of-State. Captain Keshel’s group estimates that the Virginia voter rolls have about a million names on them that they shouldn’t have. These represent 20 percent of the entire rolls. In addition, 400,000 registered voters are inactive – meaning they haven’t voted in several elections running.

This last means that reported turnout – as a fraction of registered voters – might be grossly understated. Actual turnouts in some units might exceed 100 percent. Worse yet, some units have more registered voters than estimated eligible adult citizens.

If anyone tried to impersonate that many voters at in-person check-in, Chiefs of Precinct would catch that immediately. With many inactive voters suddenly showing up, the Chiefs in some units would call their registrars. Or Members of the Unit Board of Elections would visit the precincts, ask the Chiefs about unusual trends – and get an earful. That’s why mail-in absentee ballots are the key to swaying an election by fraud.

Bottom line – Virginia is in play

All the above means that Virginia is in play, and the Democrats are striving mightily to pretend that it isn’t. If the State were not in play, the Democrats wouldn’t risk calling attention to themselves. That they have done with three obvious push polls, and spending courtroom time and fees trying to get some relatively obscure candidate thrown off the ballot – while also trying to keep a more prominent third-party challenger on the ballot, even though he doesn’t want to be on. Thus far, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn’t faced opposition to his withdrawing in Virginia. But he has in many other States that even Ballotpedia agrees are “battleground States.” These are either toss-up, tilting, or leaning States. Virginia, according to Ballotpedia, is “Likely Democrat.” Again, if that were true, Kennedy wouldn’t bother withdrawing his name.

The push polls are a psychological warfare operation designed to scare Republicans into not paying attention to Virginia. Larry Sabato disgraces himself and his educational institution by becoming part of that operation.

Obviously Donald Trump will not hold a rally in Fairfax or Loudoun Counties, or Arlington, Alexandria, or other NoVa cities. But Gov. Youngkin has already told rural voters in the Fifth District to “flood the zone” to offset NoVa. Republicans must “flood the zone” in all the “Rest of Virginia,” to offset fraud in their own precincts. But seeing Democrats pull dirty tricks, should encourage Republicans to campaign all the harder.