Get back where you belong

At the beginning of the July 23 zoning ordinance rewrite workshop of the Goochland Board of Supervisors, Board Chair Manuel Alvarez, Jr., District 2 announced that the called meeting schedule dot follow the workshop was cancelled.  County Administrator John Budesky then addressed voter disenfranchisement, which was to have been the topic of the closed session.

Goochland County, said Budesky, is working closely with Louisa County and general registrars of both jurisdictions to get all voters where they belong using the mutually agreed upon boundary. Boards of both counties will take mirror actions a to adopt identical resolutions—Louisa supervisors at their next meeting on August 5 and the Goochland Board on August 6—to petition the Circuit Court to allow electoral boards of both counties to return voters to where they belong.

These actions, said Budesky, should help the electoral boards to sort out the issue. He cautioned, that “... a lot of things that still need to align.  This is not a silver bullet.” Circuit Court approval of the petition would solve the electoral problem for this November’s local elections, but citizens may still have to vote for state and federal offices in precincts assigned along census lines.

Moving voters is governed by the Electoral Board, said Budesky, but has been of the utmost importance to the Board of Supervisors and county staff for the past 60 days. In addition to working with Louisa to craft entreaties to the Circuit Court, the Goochland supervisors offered to provide funds for the Electoral Board to retain its own counsel.

Both counties have petitioned the Census Bureau to allow proposed changes, but there are no promises that everything will be solved, said Budesky. He hoped that the issue will be resolved by the middle to end of September.

If  the action does not apply to state and federal elections, the number of voters assigned to new precincts for those elections, should be small. Those most affected would be those in the 65^th House of Delegate district in Goochland and perhaps some outside of the 22^nd Virginia Senate District in Louisa. As all voters currently   disenfranchised for local elections are in the 7^th United States Congressional District, they will vote in that district during 2020 elections, but perhaps at a precinct in another county.

For instance, voters who live in Goochland but are on the Louisa side of the census boundary could find themselves voting in the 2020 federal elections at a Louisa precinct, but casting ballots for the same candidates as they would have if they voted in Goochland. Everyone involved has pledged that the mess should be cleaned up during the 2021 redistricting following the 2020 census.

Go to http://www.goochlandva.us/ click on the calendar for August, then click on the meeting notice for the 3 p.m. Supervisors’ meeting and click on the links to see the map and related documents.