On February 25, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Privileges and Elections Committee completely altered SB 624. The bill, as passed unanimously by the Senate on February 1, expands the list of which groups can see the list of who voted in a recent past election. Currently political parties, candidates, and PACS can see the list. The bill, as originally introduced, said that non-partisan groups working to improve voter turnout may also see the list. The subcommittee altered the bill to provide that no one may see the list. This was a surprise. Campaigns find the list of who voted in the last election to be a very valuable list.
But, on February 26, the full committee voted to Table the bill. This may mean that the full Committee wants to think about the issue some more. The legislature will be in session another two weeks.
The motivation for the bill was that The Know Campaign had sued Virginia last December. The Know Campaign wants to obtain the list of who voted, so that it can send postal mail, telling voters in particular neighborhoods which of their neighbors voted in the last election. The Know Campaign has done this in other states, and research does show that when people know their neighbors may learn whether they vote or not, turnout does increase. The Virginia Attorney General asked the legislature to expand the list of groups that may see the list, in order to settle the lawsuit. In 1996, a U.S. District Court in Hawaii ruled that if a state lets candidates and parties see the list of who voted, then it cannot keep that information from newspapers.
