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Graphic of the Week: High Confidence in Virginia Election

The recent gubernatorial race in Virginia gave us our first large-scale look at voter confidence in an actual election since 2020. Examining CNN’s exit polls from Virginia, we can see that a partisan divide in election confidence persists. As the graph shows, the vast majority of Virginia voters were confident that their votes would be counted accurately. Yet of the 16 percent of Virginia voters who were not confident, the overwhelming majority backed Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, who ultimately won. Although Youngkin sought to distance himself from Donald Trump’s election lies, 70 percent of Republican voters nationwide believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Apparently a small but significant portion of the Virginia electorate, primarily Republicans, continues to distrust elections, potentially signaling that claims of fraud will remain salient going into the 2022 midterms and beyond. 

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The Texas attorney general filed a similar lawsuit earlier this week against Bexar County, which includes San Antonio.

The Commonwealth Court ruling says Butler County voters whose mail ballots were rejected were entitled to have their provisional ballots counted.

The suit is a rare preemptive move to head off a crisis after the November election — like the kind that happened in 2020.

Lawsuit alleges that counties aren’t doing enough to verify eligibility. Officials say they’re following the law.

State law appears to make it nearly impossible for qualified nominees to get their names removed. One lawmaker wants to change that.

The move escalates a brewing fight with Republicans over initiatives to proactively send applications to unregistered voters.