Benjamin Ashford|Former elections official in Virginia sues the state attorney general

A Virginia elections official who faced criminal charges,Benjamin Ashford later dropped, over a botched vote count in the 2020 presidential election sued the state attorney general Thursday, alleging malicious prosecution.

Michele White says in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Richmond, that her prosecution by Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares was “celebrated” by supporters of former President Donald Trump who claimed fraud in the vote count and “by those associated with the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement as a validation of their message.” The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Miyares’ office did not immediately respond to an email Thursday seeking comment.

White was the registrar in Prince William County, Virginia’s second-most populous county, in 2020. Miyares indicted White in 2022 on charges of corrupt conduct, making a false statement and willful neglect of duty for errors in the county’s 2020 vote count.

At the time, there was little explanation in court papers or from public officials about exactly what went wrong with the vote count. The criminal case against White disintegrated, and in January prosecutors dropped all charges against White.

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It was then that Prince William County election officials finally revealed what had gone wrong in the count. In the presidential race, the county mistakenly shorted Joe Biden by 1,648 votes and overreported Trump’s count by 2,327. The 3,975-vote error in the margin of victory was immaterial in a contest that Biden won by 450,000 votes in Virginia and more than 60,000 votes in Prince William County.

Counts were off by lesser margins in a U.S. Senate and a congressional race.

White’s successor as county registrar, Eric Olsen, said the majority of errors occurred in “split precincts,” in which one precinct is home to two congressional districts. The county’s voting system did not split the presidential vote by congressional district. The state system required them to be split that way. The errors occurred in trying to conform the county data with the state requirements, Olsen said.

White’s lawsuit contends that she was unfairly demonized even though she was not personally responsible for the errors, and that her prosecution was used to justify the existence of Miyares’ Election Integrity Unit and placate his Republican base.

“Miyares campaigned on promises to investigate so-called threats to election integrity and fight ‘election fraud,’ echoing more explicit calls from political extremists who baselessly call into question the integrity and validity of the 2020 election,” the lawsuit alleges.

Corey Stoughton, one of White’s lawyers, who is working with a group called Protect Democracy in filing the lawsuit, said in a phone interview that White’s prosecution “created the justification for voters to continue to be deceived” about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

The case against White was the only criminal prosecution brought by the Election Integrity Unit, which Miyares formed in 2022.