This issue is not ‘he said, she said’
The Rappahannock News published an article (Rapp News, Oct. 21, “District changes…”) on an issue that is distracting the office of the Registrar from necessary election preparations. I commend RappNews for trying to provide balanced reporting: the facts/claims are all present. Unfortunately, the derivation of the two accounts is very different.
• It was reported to the Registrar that up to 6 County addresses apparently were assigned to the wrong district; this was introduced at the next Electoral Board meeting, and it was decided that the examination should not be delayed to published EB meetings;
• The Registrar and an EB member jointly compared the published districting maps and the Rappahannock Road Maps, and concluded that district allocations were in error, and that it was an administrative error that could be corrected readily;
• The Registrar corrected the district assignments in the state databases and notified all affected voters on September 8;
• When Mr. Carney was notified by a voter of the changes, he questioned the Registrar;
• The Registrar provided Mr. Carney the prose description of the districts;
• He concluded that one of the addresses should not have been changed, and presented his analysis to the Registrar; she concurred and corrected that address back. No voter was EVER dis-enfranchised in this effort; one household was mis-enfranchised briefly then corrected before anyone voted.
After extended (1+ hour) phone conversations reviewing this chronology with each active EB member, Mr. Carney recorded in an expanded-distribution email that these changes were the rogue actions of one un-supervised employee, apparently based on his perception that it could appear that way to the uninformed. I am not pursuing that this account calls me a liar, because he rejected my information in favor of his speculation that the actions could be politically-motivated. Nor will I dwell on the damage this inflicts on my employee’s personal and professional reputation.
This issue is not “he said, she said.” One version was presented by the direct participants, the other is speculation and slander (and I recognize that is a legal term). It is unfortunate that the latter is getting even more airtime in this reporting.