After ruling, Va. voters' history may be more public

RICHMOND

Under the gun of a judge’s adverse ruling, it appears the General Assembly may finally widen access to Virginia’s jealously guarded voter history lists.

Those lists, which reveal who voted in each recent election, including party primaries, are valuable to candidates and party organizations, which use them for targeted campaign mailings and phone calls. They don’t reveal how anyone voted – just when.

Under current law, the lists are available only to elected officials, candidates and party chairmen. Last year, however, a Richmond judge struck down the law as unconstitutional, ruling in favor of the Know Campaign, a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote group that sought to acquire the lists.

This year, at the request of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration, Del. Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell, introduced a bill, HB1118, which would also make the lists available to political action committees and to members of the public and nonprofit groups that seek to promote voter participation.

The measure was approved unanimously today by a House subcommittee.

The bill specifies that get-out-the vote groups must conduct their activities “without intimidation or pressure.”

That provision appears to be an effort to preclude a tactic such as the one attempted by the Know Campaign in 2009. The group planned a personalized mass mailing that would have revealed the voting histories not only of recipients, but of their close neighbors as well.

The rationale was that people would be less likely to stay home from the polls if they thought their neighbors would find out. Some critics called it a “shaming” strategy.