Virginia's Governor, Glenn Youngkin (R), unveiled a new website this week in an effort to get Republican voters to vote early, both in-person and using absentee ballots.
Secure Your Vote Virginia "is how Republicans win in 2023," according to a message on the website's front page. Visitors who scroll down will be met with two links: One to sign up as an absentee voter and one to sign up for notices of when and where to vote early in-person.
The governor told News 3 on Wednesday that early voting helped propel him to victory in 2021. He believes embracing different methods of voting in 2023 will help his party's candidates in November's General Assembly election.
"One, signing up for the permanent absentee ballot list, or requesting an absentee ballot, is a safe, secure process and this website can be very helpful for that, but also the idea of voting early is just a critical part of exercising our fundamental rights as Virginians," he said in a Zoom interview.
In recent years, Democrats have embraced early voting, as opposed to some Republican candidates, who have questioned the integrity of mail-in ballots in particular.
"We run secure and safe elections in Virginia. Everyone gets a paper ballot, and we have counting machines, not voting machines. Therefore, there's a full paper trail and audit trail," Gov. Youngkin said, adding that voters will receive emails when they're going to receive an absentee ballot and when it's been returned.
The Democratic Party of Virginia is watching the launch of the new website.
Aaron Mukerjee, the Democrats' Voter Protection Director, says his party supports any effort to get more people to vote, but adds that, until now, he hasn't seen those efforts from the Youngkin administration.
"In every single way, Virginia Republicans and Governor Youngkin have tried to make it harder to vote and caved to conspiracy theorists and so I think it's both long overdue, this effort, but it's also not enough to reverse the damage they've done to our democracy," he told News 3. "Put us back in ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center), which is an interstate system that would help us catch voter fraud and help folks who are eligible to register to vote get registered to vote."
Virginia announced its plans to leave ERIC in May. It's the eighth Republican-led state to do so.
