Bill to ban voting history mailers that ‘put people on blast’ dies in Va. Senate

By: Graham Moomaw - January 18, 2022 5:38 pm

Virginia political operatives can continue to use voters’ personal information to try to shame them into casting a ballot, despite a lawmaker’s effort to ban a practice he described as invasive and inappropriate.

The Democratic Party of Virginia angered some of its own voters last year with mailers, styled as “voter report cards,” that included the recipient’s name and compared their voting history with their neighbors, implying people who don’t regularly participate in elections could be publicly outed as civically negligent.

Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, told the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee Tuesday he was “a little bit shocked” to see a mailer comparing his daughter’s voting history to others in his neighborhood.

“You cannot take voter file information and put people on blast,” Petersen said. “I think that’s just common sense.”

But the committee didn’t see Petersen’s proposal as a common-sense fix, rejecting it in a 7-8 vote.

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