10/24/12: An isolated incident? Or something more?

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

THE DEADLINE for registering to vote in the November election has passed — but not without some drama that has brought Virginia, once again, into the national spotlight.

A Pennsylvania man, working in Virginia to register voters, was arrested last week on charges that he attempted to throw away completed registration forms on Oct. 15, the last day to register to vote.

An alert business owner in Harrisonburg notified authorities when he found discarded forms behind his store, after seeing “a guy throw a bag of trash in my cardboard dumpster and speed off,” according to his Facebook posting.

An investigation led the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office to charge Colin Small with 13 counts, including eight felonies, in connection with the incident.

The company for which Small worked, Pinpoint, operated offices throughout Virginia , including one in Chesapeake and one in Virginia Beach. We don’t know whether the discarded forms were an isolated event or something more.

And we may never know, because there is no statewide investigation to find out.

Election-related offenses are handled at the local level, by the commonwealth’s attorney’s offices. The Virginia State Board of Elections is charged with the supervision and coordination of localities’ electoral boards and registrars to ensure “legality and purity in all elections.” The three-member board is appointed by the governor, with two members from his party and one from the other party.

A statewide investigation would be conducted by the attorney general’s office, but he can’t initiate it. Either all of the commonwealth’s attorneys or the State Board of Elections would have to make a request.

The former is unlikely, and the latter is not going to happen. The elections board announced that it will not ask for an investigation.

The board has not provided a reason, other than to say that the problem in Harrisonburg appears to be an isolated incident. Except it has provided no basis for that opinion. Until and unless there is an investigation, that’s pure speculation.

And a reckless disregard for the “legality and purity” of our elections.

The United States is one of only 11 democracies in the world without the right to vote explicitly enshrined in its Constitution. House Joint Resolution 28 proposes an amendment that would provide such a protection.

In the interim, we have a patchwork of state laws that set such requirements as polling hours and voter identification. And who can initiate a statewide investigation into violations.

The attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, has proposed that legislation be introduced that would give that office “concurrent authority with commonwealth’s attorneys to investigate and prosecute violations of our election laws.” Such legislation would be effective for the future but does nothing to address the concerns of today.

It is within the power of the State Board of Elections to ask for an investigation now. I urge its members to do so. The integrity of our elections depends on it.

The eight registration forms that had been discarded were taken to the Rocking-ham County registrar’s office just before the 5 p.m. filing deadline. Three of the voters were already registered, one could not be registered because of a felony conviction, and four new Virginia voters were added to the rolls.

But for the actions of one man, those four would have been denied the privilege to participate in our democracy. Virginians deserve to know if others have actually been disenfranchised.