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  • Trump, Youngkin urge early voting during tele-rally – WTOP News

    Trump, Youngkin urge early voting during tele-rally – WTOP News

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    Former President Donald Trump appears to have softened his opposition to mail-in ballots.

    This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury. 

    With early voting now underway in Virginia, former President Donald Trump appears to have warmed up to the practice of sending out mail-in ballots to voters for the November general election — a position contrary to his many deprecatory comments regarding mail-in voting.

    “In this election we must use every appropriate tool to beat the radical left Democrats, that’s why I am urging every Virginia patriot to vote early, and don’t wait,” Trump said during a telephone rally hosted by Gov. Glenn Youngkin Sunday evening. “You’ve heard a lot about voting by mail, but that’s what we have right now.”

    On the 15-minute call, Trump asked Republican voters to cast their ballots “either by mail, early in person or on Election Day.”

    “We have long term voting, we used to have one day, paper ballots, all the things that you know we want to do, but you’re in the first group and I am asking you to get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know and make a plan to vote for Trump,” the GOP’s presidential nominee said.

    Virginia is one of just three states — the other two being Minnesota and South Dakota — where early voting started on Friday, 45 days before the Nov. 5 election. At least 59,686 Virginians have since cast their ballots as of Sunday evening, according to data from the Virginia Public Access Project.

    With just 895 returned ballots, mail-in voting marked just a fraction of the total number of votes cast by that time.

    Trump has consistently spoken against mail-in voting on the campaign trail while spouting conspiracy theories and falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes had been stolen from him.

    “Mail-in voting is totally corrupt. Get that through your head. It has to be,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in February. And during an interview with the British GB News in March, he asserted that “anytime the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating.”

    Trump’s cautious embrace of early and mail-in voting aligns with the GOP’s slow acceptance of a practice that has expanded the tent of voters nationwide in recent years and proven to be beneficial for increasing turnout on both sides of the aisle.

    “Both campaigns are really talking about the election in apocalyptic terms, and this is really motivating voters,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington.

    “Early voting absolutely works for campaigns; you don’t have to worry about getting voters to the polls on Election Day. If the ballot is locked in at election time, it gets a lot easier, and election officials can focus on voters who haven’t made it to the polls,” Farnsworth said

    During Sunday’s telephone rally, Trump rattled off a list of different ways for Virginians to cast their ballots early.

    “Every county in Virginia has at least one early voting location, so that’s important to know. Most counties have early voting Monday through Friday. Any registered Virginia voter can get out and vote as early as possible, you can vote tomorrow,” he said.

    Trump said that he could be the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Virginia since President George W. Bush won his reelection bid in 2004.

    “Because if we are really going at it, we have a really good chance to win Virginia, there hasn’t been one in decades by a presidential candidate,” he said.

    Trump still faces an uphill battle in the commonwealth, where he trails Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, by 10 percentage points, according to a Morning Consult poll conducted between Aug. 30 and Sept. 8.

    But a more recent survey by the University of Mary Washington released last week found that the race has since tightened, with Harris leading Trump with just 48 to 46% in a two-way contest, within the poll’s margin of error.

    Virginia Democrats, however, pushed back against the narrative that the presidential race in the commonwealth was competitive.

    “While Trump is literally phoning it in here in Virginia, Team Harris-Walz and Virginia Democrats are turning unmatched enthusiasm into action, highlighting the stark contrast between Vice President Harris’ new way forward and Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda that would give him unchecked control over our daily lives,” said Virginia Democratic Party chair Susan Swecker.

    Harris has yet to campaign in the commonwealth as the Democratic presidential nominee. Her husband, Douglas Emhoff, is set to visit Charlottesville on Wednesday.

    Also on Sunday’s call, Youngkin reiterated that elections in Virginia are safe and that voters can trust the process.

    “We have paper ballots, we have counting machines, not voting machines, lockboxes are under 24-7 security, and we have a great process to make sure that the ballots are not only kept but custody is clear. And finally, noncitizens will be prosecuted if they vote,” he said.

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    Matt Small

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  • Virginia one step closer to creating single gaming agency – WTOP News

    Virginia one step closer to creating single gaming agency – WTOP News

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    Legal gaming has surged to new heights in Virginia, transforming into a multibillion-dollar annual market as the state’s expanding casinos, sports betting, and online gaming sectors fuel economic growth and reshape the entertainment landscape.

    This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury. 

    Legal gaming has surged to new heights in Virginia, transforming into a multibillion-dollar annual market as the state’s expanding casinos, sports betting, and online gaming sectors fuel economic growth and reshape the entertainment landscape.

    But the industry is currently overseen by multiple state agencies, and splitting those duties has created oversight and enforcement gaps in the rapidly expanding industry. After a 2022 report by the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission (JLARC) recommended that Virginia give a single state agency the power to regulate most gambling, efforts began to consolidate regulatory powers by a centralized body.

    On Wednesday, the newly created Joint Subcommittee to Study the Feasibility of Establishing the Virginia Gaming Commission for the first time reviewed a proposal that would put the numerous agencies under one roof.

    Under the two-year plan before the committee, an independent state agency — dubbed the Virginia Gaming Commission — would consolidate the regulatory powers over online gambling, charity gaming, bingo, live horse racing, fantasy contests, the state’s five licensed casinos, and 10 licenses for Rosie’s Gaming Emporium.

    A Virginia Gaming Commission would have regulatory powers over bingo, online gambling, charity gaming, fantasy contests, live horse racing, and the state’s casinos (Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury)

    The sole exception under the proposal is the Virginia Lottery, a state agency created in 1987 after a statewide voter referendum, that would remain a separate entity and continue to oversee and regulate the sale of lottery tickets in the commonwealth.

    “As we have gone through the cost-benefit analysis, our team has studied different options, continued stakeholder outreach and working sessions with the agencies, and our team views this option as the best path forward,” Collin Hood, a director at the Virginia-based consulting firm Guidehouse, advised the committee at its meeting in Richmond Wednesday.

    The target operating model for the Virginia Gaming Commission, Hood added, is an “efficient, cost-effective and strong regulator.”

    If realized under the proposed plan, the new state agency would be able to respond to new regulatory and oversight needs from emerging gaming types, maintain the state’s commitment to horse racing and charitable gaming industries, increase transparency through centralized annual reporting to the public and the state government, and increase accountability for gaming regulation and oversight.

    It would also facilitate a consistent statewide problem gambling strategy across all gaming types and clarify the points of contact for key stakeholders, including Virginia State Police, local law enforcement, state legislators and the industry itself.

    “Change is difficult, but it is the right thing that we need to do to get a handle on it, otherwise everybody is working in different silos,” Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania and the committee chair, said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting.

    “There is internet gaming or electronic gaming that happens in the cloud, and we have three different agencies trying to manage that, so there’s some areas where we can save the state a lot of money.”

    Heading toward $21 billion in wagers

    The plan recommended by Guidehouse, which is drafting various options, “is probably where we’re headed,” Reeves said. “Consolidation is going to help us with enforcement and compliance. If you talk to prosecutors today, they don’t even know what they are looking at.”

    Before Virginia’s anti-gambling stance softened in 2018, about $3.4 billion was wagered on state lottery games, charitable gaming and traditional horse racing — a number that grew steadily as the state approved more ways to gamble. By 2025, when four casinos are expected to be open, total wagering could grow to $21 billion.

    The JLARC report recommended that the Virginia Lottery should become the primary gambling regulator, noting the agency has already been beefing up its staff to handle sports betting and the four casinos being built around the state.

    But the Virginia Racing Commission that is in charge of live horse racing and the horse racing-adjacent Rosie’s slots enterprise, doesn’t have the staff to carry out its regulatory mission, the report found. It further concluded the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services — which regulates forms of charitable gaming like bingo, poker and slots-like machines called electronic pull tabs — also doesn’t have the resources to do its job.

    The creation of the Virginia Gaming Commission as a head organization would bring together the existing agencies in an effort to provide the state’s response to a rapidly changing industry, Reeves said.

    “I’ve never voted for gambling, and now I find myself the chairman of the committee, only from the simple fact that this all started from charitable gaming and then finding fraud in it,” he said, referring to findings by a General Assembly subcommittee in 2021 that showed corruption in the state’s charitable gaming industry was rampant due to inadequate oversight and conflicts of interest.

    The Virginia Lottery could one day be added to the Virginia Gaming Commission’s responsibilities. (Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury)

    “We cleaned that up, and everybody learned some hard lessons,” Reeves said. “What we are trying to do here as legislators is that we don’t have the time or bandwidth to monitor all these different gambling institutions, that shouldn’t be our job. In the end we made a policy decision, it’s not a political decision, we are taking politics out of it.”

    ‘A good way to govern’

    Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, committee member and an unapologetic critic of legal gaming, applauded the proposed consolidation plan.

    “We’re moving judiciously and prudently, and this is a big issue because right now we have a number of different agencies regulating the industry, and they all do it a little bit differently,” Krizek said. “It really needs to be consolidated under one umbrella, that brings expertise and people that know the whole industry.”

    Under the current system, legislators like himself don’t have an easy point of contact to go to  with concerns, Krizek said.

    “It ends up being the loudest voices that catch our ear, and really what we need is an expert agency that can vet all of this and make sure that it especially protects the public. And that’s the kind of input that would come from a Virginia Gaming Commission.”

    As the next step, the Guidehouse consultants are tasked with delivering a final report for the committee to vote on at its next meeting in November while lawmakers begin to develop the legislation framework to change the code for the consolidation. The General Assembly would weigh the measure during the 2025 session.

    The proposed two-year roadmap toward the creation of the new state agency would formally begin on July 1. After a successful launch of the Virginia Gaming Commission, lawmakers would reconsider consolidating Virginia Lottery operations under the same roof.

    “This is the first time in 13 years that I have seen us take a proactive approach to government rather than making a cheese sandwich and saying you’ve got to eat it,” Reeves said. “It’s going to allow more people the opportunity to enter the process and to those setting it up a realistic timeline so it’s not so stressful. This is what I would call a good way to govern.”

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    Ivy Lyons

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