by Graham Moomaw, Virginia Mercury

Virginia conservatives have pointed to the prosecution of Prince William County’s former top election official for allegedly fudging 2020 vote counts as the strongest evidence available that fraud was a real concern in the last presidential contest.

On Thursday, after the case against former Registrar Michele White was dropped, the county’s elections office revealed that the tabulation errors actually worked in favor of former President Donald Trump.

In a statement, the Prince William elections office said Trump received 2,327 more votes in the county than he should have, and President Joe Biden was “shorted” 1,648 votes. The swing of a few thousand votes did not affect the overall outcome of the race in Virginia, where Biden won by more than 450,000 votes.

“The reporting errors were presumably a consequence of the results tapes not being programmed to a format that was compatible with state reporting requirements,” read the statement from Prince William Director of Elections Eric Olsen. “Attempts to correct this issue appear to have created errors. The reporting errors did not consistently favor one party or candidate but were likely due to a lack of proper planning, a difficult election environment and human error.”

The county said the mistakes in 2020 also led to an undercount of votes for both U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Daniel Gade. The discrepancy also wasn’t large enough to affect the outcome in that race, which Warner won comfortably.

Votes for U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, were also undercounted in Prince William, said Olsen, but not enough to affect the outcome of that election, which Wittman won.

Olsen said his office has made “improvements” to try to ensure the errors are not repeated.

“Mistakes are unfortunate but require diligence and innovation to correct. They do not reflect a purposeful attempt to undermine the integrity of the electoral process and the investigation into this matter ended with that conclusion,” Olsen said. “We have worked to bring transparency to the reporting of an election that happened three years ago. … The public should have faith in the thousands of tireless public servants and volunteers who preserve and protect our democracy.”

The Prince William prosecution was one of the highest-profile cases taken up by the election integrity unit created by Attorney General Jason Miyares. When that unit was announced in 2022, both Miyares and the Republican Party of Virginia pointed to Prince William to make the case for why an election integrity unit was necessary.

After the Prince William case was announced, the attorney general’s office repeatedly refused to go into detail about the basis for the charges against White, saying it could not comment on pending litigation.

“We are pleased that the attorney general’s investigation into the 2020 election results encouraged the Prince William County Office of Elections to reform their processes and add transparency,  which will increase confidence and better serve Virginians,” Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said Thursday evening.

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