Voters at a polling station in Buckingham County, Nov. 3, 2020. (Parker Michels-Boyce/For the Virginia Mercury)
Five Waynesboro voters have filed a lawsuit to prevent the majority of the Waynesboro Board of Elections from following through on their controversial pledge to refuse certification of the November 2024 election results, a move they argue would violate Virginia state law.
The plaintiffs — Jennifer Lewis, Ann Criser-Shedd, Greg Fife, Chris Graham and Andrea Jackson — are seeking a court order to compel the election officials to certify the city’s votes.
The lawsuit, filed in Waynesboro Circuit Court on Oct. 21, comes after two GOP officials from Waynesboro filed their own lawsuit challenging Virginia’s voting system ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election while threatening to not certify the results.
In their complaint, Curtis Lilly, the chairman of the Waynesboro Electoral Board, and Scott Mares, the board’s vice chair, expressed their concerns over the reliability of electronic voting systems, which they argue are prone to inaccuracies. Instead, they demanded that all ballots be counted by hand.
However, state law does not currently require a mandatory hand-count unless irregularities are proven, and all paper ballots are required to be counted by optical scanning machines, which help speed up the counting process and reduce the risk of human error.
Before each election, the scanners undergo rigorous testing using a predetermined sample of votes to ensure accurate tallying before any real votes are counted. Additionally, it is illegal to connect ballot scanning machines to the Internet at any point, further safeguarding the integrity of the voting process.
All of the scanners used in Virginia’s elections are certified to meet both state and federal standards and are handled under a strict chain of custody to ensure security and accuracy.
In their counter-suit, the five Waynesboro voters ask the court to require the election officials to certify the election results unless they prevail in their own suit. The plaintiffs further argue that the election officials’ stance violates the Virginia Constitution, which mandates that election results be certified in accordance with established procedures, including the use of legally authorized voting equipment.
“The chairman and vice chairman should do their job; instead they are purposely misinterpreting what they are charged to do. I cast my vote and have every right to expect that it will be counted on Election Day,” said Lewis, one of the plaintiffs.
Jackson, another plaintiff, said that voting in the 2024 election was “very important” to her.
“I am frustrated that the election officials are not doing what they take an oath to do, which is to make sure the election runs smoothly and every vote counts. Instead they are distracting us from our local elections by filing nonsensical court cases,” Jackson said.
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