Old Dominion’s Republican governor is moving to ensure election integrity ahead of November, while other Republican-led states do the same. Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) issued an executive order on Wednesday requiring election officials to adhere to stringent guidelines, including the use of only paper ballots, the thorough tracking of ballots, and a triple-check system to ensure election results are accurate. “The Virginia model for securing elections has proven itself over the past few years despite the significant expansion of voting days and locations and the lingering effects of the pandemic on state and local governments,” Youngkin wrote. “Under my Administration, Virginia has made unprecedented strides in improving the accuracy of our voter list including substantial updates for removal of deceased voters and protection against non-citizen registration.”

Youngkin noted that last year alone, nearly 80,000 deceased voters were purged from the voter list, and 6,303 non-citizens were identified and removed from the voter list between January 2022 and July 2024. Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at Family Research Council and election integrity adviser at FRC Action, commented on “Washington Watch” Thursday night, “I think the governor has aggressively addressed an issue that must be addressed across the country.” He continued, “As you know, we have a decentralized system, and so states are approaching these problems differently. But what needs to be addressed is the real threat to the integrity of citizenship and our country, and that’s tied to the porous borders that we have.” Blackwell added, “So our national sovereignty and the integrity of citizenship is really wrapped up in how the various states — or all of our states — deal with these election integrity issues.”

“You just have to be willing to press the envelope, because what’s at stake [is] the integrity of citizenship in our country and our national sovereignty,” Blackwell observed. “And so making sure that we have people in elected positions for the secretaries of state or governor that are willing to say, ‘We’re going to go to the mat on these issues,’ it’s very important.”

In his executive order, Youngkin boasted of the “fairness, transparency, and legality of Virginia’s voting process” under his administration. Measures the governor directed to achieve those results include the use of only paper ballots, “which provide a physical record of the voter’s intent;” “[u]se of paper ballot counting machines, not voting machines;” the testing of machines prior to counting and the assurance that they are not connected in any way to the internet; “strict” chain-of-custody requirements for handling and counting of ballots, including daily checks of the number of paper ballots against the number of voters checked in at polling locations; the requirement of an application for a mail-in ballot prior to the delivery of a mail-in ballot; and “24/7 monitoring” of ballot drop-boxes.

Elected in 2022, Youngkin is the first Republican governor that Virginia has had in almost 10 years; he was preceded by Democrats Ralph Northam and Terry McAuliffe. Blackwell noted that Republicans have maintained major offices longer in other states, like Ohio, where Blackwell previously served as both treasurer and secretary of state, and thus have less work to do in securing election integrity. “Ohio didn’t have as deep a hole that Virginia had. And the reason for that is that we’ve had two consecutive secretaries of state that have dealt with non-citizen voting and have also dealt with keeping foreign money out of our elections, changing the composition of the electorate,” he explained. “We’ve done it by making sure that we have all of the polls in Ohio covered with trained poll workers and observers, so it’s a very transparent system.”

“President Trump won Ohio by eight points, I would imagine that he’s going to win Ohio by eight points again. This is not going to be down to a nail-biting contest like it will be in Virginia, because that will be a claw-back effort by the Trump team,” Blackwell observed. Turning to other states, especially battlegrounds, he continued, “But when you start talking about Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, we’re talking about results that will probably be within the margin of litigation again.”

Blackwell also addressed his “biggest concerns” relating to election integrity nationally: “poll coverage, making sure that it’s a transparent system. We need to make sure, in our 3,100 counties, as many, if not all of the polls are covered by bipartisan sets of eyes,” he urged. Blackwell continued, “The other thing is to make sure that we are aggressive in cleaning up the voter rolls. … And I would personally add to that the voter ID I mean, we need to know that people are who they say they are.”