INTERVIEW: New Jersey Has Saner Election Laws Than Virginia. That Has to Change
by Jacob Grandstaff
Despite being a blue state, New Jersey Democrats aren’t as opposed to election integrity as Virginia Democrats, who take their cues from California.
The Nov. 4 elections were disappointing for Republicans in that they weren’t surprising for Democrats. New Jersey is a reliably blue state that sometimes swings purple, and Virginia is a reliably purple state that usually swings against whichever party occupies the White House. For those who believe in secure elections, however, Virginia offers more cause for concern.
The state’s ridiculous election laws make blue New Jersey look like a bastion of election integrity, showing just how far off the deep end Old Dominion Democrats have sunk.
In an exclusive interview with Restoration News, Election Transparency Initiative chairman Ken Cuccinelli noted, "There have been over 60 changes to Virginia election law since Democrats had their 3-way sweep in 2017.”
Born in New Jersey and raised in Virginia, Cuccinelli served as Virginia Attorney General from 2010 to 2014, before Democrats' election "reforms" turned a once-secure election day into a 45-day marathon and a potential fraud magnet.
"It's like Marc Elias rewrote our laws," he said, referring to the Democrat operative who bankrolled the Steele Dossier against President Donald Trump in 2016.
Cuccinelli noted that Democrats didn't get every wish but one of the most harmful changes they made was implementing same-day voter registration without requiring voter ID.
"There's no way to know if the person you're registering is telling the truth," Cuccinelli said. "Once the ballot goes into the box, there's no getting it out."
Last year, a Chinese national infamously voted illegally in Michigan using his student ID. Michigan also has same-day voter registration. Although authorities later arrested him, his vote counted once it was cast, and the student fled the country with a second passport in his name.
"The other side likes to argue accessibility," Cucinelli said, referring to Democrats, "but it's really making it easy to cheat. It's hard not to think they're not doing it intentionally."
Another harmful law Virginia Democrats imposed is 45 days of early voting, or the "45-day election."
"I talked to the Commissioner of Elections, and she said, when they made that change, no one thought about when election officials are going to do their laundry," Cuccinelli said. "If you're going to have early voting, you don't need more than a week. We're short of manpower to do this."
This creates another little-discussed problem with left-wing electoral reforms—the heightened potential for human error. For instance, Restoration News previously reported how a cookie crash out by a stressed Madison city clerk caused nearly 200 Wisconsin votes to go uncounted last year.
"When you design a system when you're wearing your people out, you create more opportunities for mistakes," he said.
Cuccinelli believes the lengthened election process damages the democratic system itself. "It's extremely messy when candidates have to run ads and debate after people start voting," he said, adding he believes this limits turnout and heightens polarization. "When you concentrated election on Election Day, the parties actually performed the function of turning people out more effectively," he said.
"You can't sustain that for 45 days."
He recalled the electoral culture before the radicals took over the Virginia Democrat Party and decided to use the state as a guinea pig.
When I was running, I could focus on one day as the finish line. You were trying to motivate your people to vote for you but you were also explaining what you were going to do to convince persuadable voters. I spent a lot of effort doing that. Having 45 days of voting messes with campaign strategy and, I believe, contributes to the polarization because it favors teams playing against each other rather than candidates competing against each other.
New Jersey's Balanced Approach: Safeguards Over Excess
Chipping away at election integrity is a pastime of Democrats, but not all Democrats are created equal. In deep-blue New Jersey, Democrats hold supermajorities without gutting safeguards as badly as Virginia Democrats.
For instance, the Garden State stick to a tight 6 to 9-day early voting window, depending on whether it's a primary or general election.
Although New Jersey does not require photo ID, it doesn't make the double mistake of also offering same-day voter registration like Virginia. Instead, the state requires a 21-day registration buffer between registering and being eligible cast a ballot.
This dichotomy likely owes to northern Virginia being a hodgepodge of northeastern and California "progressives" who've swarmed the state in the past two decades, a consequence of the ever-growing Deep State. Unlike New Jersey, which attracts Democrats with finance degrees who work in New York City, Virginia attracts Democrats with liberal arts degrees seeking work in Washington, D.C. This introduces a certain level of power-hungry, experimental extremism common among West Coast leftists.
Thankfully, the Virginia Republican Party is much more competitive than the California Republican Party. But this doesn't stop Virginia Democrats from implementing their revolutionary designs every time they do with an election.
Virginia's election system—marred by same-day registration without photo ID, a sprawling 45-day voting window, and a cascade of other post-2017 Democrat-induced changes—stands as a cautionary tale of liberal overreach. The specific breed of lefties who run the Virginia Democratic Party take their reforms to a revolutionary scale that threatens the integrity of their state's elections, transforming a once-orderly, process into a leftist experiment. As Cuccinelli warns, these "reforms" don't expand access; they invite fraud, exhaust election workers, and heighten polarization.
New Jersey's moderate election laws show that Democrats don't have to act this way. Virginia needs better Democrats because it deserves better elections. With Spanberger, Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi, and Attorney General-elect Jay Jones, they can expect neither.
Republished with permisson from Restoration News.
Jacob Grandstaff is an Investigative Researcher for Restoration News specializing in election integrity and labor policy. He graduated from the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C.
