Virginia Democrats Rush to Consolidate Power in Perpetuity

Democrats in Virginia gained seats in the state Assembly and won the governor’s seat (Abigail Spanberger), the lieutenant governor’s seat (Ghazala Hashmi), and the attorney general’s seat (Jay Jones). They are now rushing to protect their power indefinitely.

Democrats have been in power in Virginia for under 48 hours, and they’ve already introduced a bill to ban the hand-counting of election ballots. The legislation requires ballot scanner machines to be used to count machine-readable ballots. It prohibits such ballots from being counted by hand for any reason or purpose not specifically authorized by law. The law notes some minimal specific instances when ballots can be hand-counted.

There are other election changes, such as scanner requirements for ballots and extended absentee deadlines.

Geiger Capital notes that Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and many others. All use paper ballots and hand count. The US is the outlier, with worse results. 

Goodbye Virginia

Lawmakers also held public hearings on four constitutional amendments covering abortion access, restoring felon voting rights, gay marriage, and allowing mid-decade redistricting of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts to eliminate all or all but one Republican district.

Gov. Spanberger returned Virginia to a sanctuary state status. She repealed an executive order signed by her Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, that required local and state police to cooperate with federal immigration officers.

The new administration prefiled bills to include a 3.8% investment income tax, new sales taxes on services, gun taxes, and bans on assault weapons. Republicans decry the package as a tax hike and crime leniency bonanza after she ran on affordability, while figures like Elon Musk and Sen. Mike Lee raised alarms over voting reforms.

Democrats in Virginia have introduced a bill that discriminates against White men in government contracting. For discretionary contracts under $100K, White men won’t be considered unless there is no competition.

The bill reads:

The bill creates the Division of Procurement Enhancement within the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity for purposes of collaborating with the Department of General Services, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, the Department of Transportation, and covered institutions to further the Commonwealth’s efforts to meet the goals established under the Small SWaM Business Procurement Enhancement Program, as well as implementing initiatives to enhance the development of small businesses, microbusinesses, women-owned businesses, minority-owned businesses, and service disabled veteran-owned businesses in the Commonwealth.

Finally, the bill requires the Director of the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity to conduct, or contract with an independent entity to conduct, a disparity study every five years, with the next disparity study due no later than January 1, 2027. The bill specifies that such a study shall evaluate the need for enhancement and remedial measures to address the disparity between the availability and the utilization of women-owned and minority-owned businesses. The provisions of the bill other than those requiring such study have a delayed effective date of January 1, 2027, and apply to covered institutions beginning July 1, 2027.

They are picking winners and losers according to their view that white men are oppressors and everyone else is oppressed.