Arlington election officials are planning to comb through the data to see if any non-citizens have voted in recent elections locally.
The decision, announced during the Aug. 13 Electoral Board meeting, comes after the advocacy group Education Process Education Corporation (EPEC) released findings suggesting that 57 people who did not hold U.S. citizenship were or had been on the voter rolls in Arlington, with 13 of them casting ballots in a total of 38 elections.
The figures were part of a larger data dump of national data from EPEC, suggesting that while there may not be a huge number of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections, it is not a minuscule amount.
At the Aug. 13 meeting, officials cautioned not to put the cart ahead of the horse. Richard Samp, the Electoral Board’s chair and one of two Republicans on the three-member body, said there was no way to verify the accuracy of the EPEC figures without looking into the matter.
The body’s three members requested that county elections director Gretchen Reinemeyer and her staff dig into the data they have on hand to find out more.
“Let’s start there,” said Electoral Board secretary Kim Phillip, the body’s lone Democrat.
Reinemeyer said they’d move forward. “We’ll investigate . . . and report back,” she said.
If any suspected malfeasance is found, incidents could be turned over to the offices of Arlington’s commonwealth’s attorney or the state attorney general for follow-up.
Not surprisingly in the current polarized political environment, the question of how serious an issue non-citizen voting may be breaks, hard, along partisan lines. While Democrats (and many in the media) downplay the issue, Republicans said it needs to be looked at and more forcefully addressed.
Frank Lusby, who has led an effort by local Republicans focused on election security, asked Arlington election officials to reinforce staff training on the matter, and to place signage in polling places alerting those in line that if they are not citizens, they can’t vote in any Virginia election.
“Some individuals may not even know,” he said.
