I sent an email containing what amounted to the following information to Mrs. Keirsten Kelly, wife of Mark Kelly, candidate for Arlington County Board who attends church with me.
The City of Alexandria has engaged in misconduct involving the inadequate training of volunteer poll workers, one of whom, named Michels, deprived me of the right to vote by erasing my vote rather than assist me to operate the voting machines about 3:30 to 4 p.m. at the Cora Kelly recreation center voting place on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. Michels erased my vote instead.
She then attempted to tell the Registrar of Voters in Alexandria City that I did not give her the correct information to enable her to help me operate the machines. Erasing someone's vote is not something that should be undertaken lightly without ascertaining the facts.
Michels was working as a volunteer poll worker on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at the Cora Kelly Recreation Center polling place in Alexandria City. After I had voted for a member of Congress, I approached the poll workers asking for assistance in operating the machine as it was unclear how to turn a wheel to make a choice as to tax issues. Normally, operating a computer does not involve turning a wheel. I am sure these machines were purchased for the usual reasons in Alexandria, undue influence by a vendor who knew someone in purchasing in the City of Alexandria.
Michels, a female volunteer poll worker, asked me no questions and simply erased my vote. She then made false representations as to her conduct to the Virginia Registrar of Voters by cell phone, in a conversation witnessed by me as well as Ms. Rosa Byrd, an Alexandria City Voting official. While Ms. Byrd's conduct was entirely exemplary, I wish to inform you of the lack of responsibility exhibited by the City of Alexandria in failing to adequately train poll workers in general especially in not impressing upon them that depriving voters of their right to vote by going into a person’s voting booth and electronically erasing their vote after failing to ascertain the situation adequately at that booth is irresponsible enough, but lying about it and giving the voter a hard time and being mean and downright vicious toward the voter is not only insult upon injury but entirely unacceptable in America.
I am a United States citizen whose parents spent a combined total of 70 years in government service after they came to this godforsaken Northern Virginia area during World War II. I am sick and tired of the idiots in the City of Alexandria and its excuse for a government. I beseech you to do something about this hideously lawless excuse for a government.
What, I do not know. But I am sure you can get together and think of something.
In the meantime, I wish to assert that giving a person less than 24 hours' notice of an administrative hearing on this mater is a violation of the due process right to an adequate notice period prior to a hearing.
If such notice period is provided for by the Virginia Voting Rights Statute it is seriously flawed.
If it is merely a practice of the local government, then the local government is not abiding by the law but with less than 24 hours' notice of hearing, who can go to a law library and do research on the matter. Instead I took myself to a restaurant for lunch and went home.
Your job is to enforce the law but you know as well as I that the 5th Amendment Right to due process is being violated by inadequate notice when such little time to prepare a case and to mount a Constitutional challenge is provided for in the notice provisions of the Virginia Voting Rights statute. If a practice of inadequate notice is being followed and it is not provided by law, then officials of the city of Alexandria are operating lawlessly. The 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution has been extended to the State of Virginia by the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This challenge to the Virginia voting rights law is being mounted on these grounds under the United States Constitution.
You have the Virginia Bar so you figure it out. I don’t want to particularly go to Eric Holder to figure it out for you, but any port in a storm as far as the idiots who think they actually have a government in Alexandria City are concerned and somebody has to straighten them out.
Respectfully Submitted,
Marjorie Beth Salwin
Alexandria, Virginia
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
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