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Elections Board OKs GOP loyalty oath for presidential primary11/27/2007By BOB LEWIS / Associated PressVoters in Virginia's Feb. 12 Republican presidential primary will have to sign an oath swearing loyalty to the eventual GOP ticket.The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request that all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing to vote for the Republican presidential nominee next fall.The SBE also voted to refer two complaints about campaign advertising in two northern Virginia state Senate races to the commonwealth's attorney's office in Fairfax County for further investigation.There is no practical way to enforce the GOP covenant in the constitutionally guaranteed secrecy of the voting booth. Yet the oath is a concept Virginia's GOP has considered for years.Voters in Virginia do not register by party. Since the mid-90s, the state's Republicans have fretted that Democrats might meddle in their primaries, which are open to all registered voters.Virginia Democrats require no oath for their presidential primary, which will be held the same day.In the General Assembly, Republicans have pushed legislation to require party registration. At the same time, they have battled, with mixed results, in court against the open primary law.In October, a federal appeals court ruled that a state law that gives incumbent elected officials seeking re-election the right to demand that the nomination be decided in a primary unconstitutionally forces Republicans to open their nomination process to others.The board voted 3-2 to refer two disputes over alleged violations of the state's "Stand By Your Ad" law to the Fairfax County commonwealth's attorney. The SBE took the action saying it had too little information about the claims and no authority or staff to investigate them.The law requires that candidates in all political ads disclose who paid to have them broadcast or printed. A violation is punishable by a fine $2,500 for each time it is aired or published, said Chris Piper, who heads SBE's campaign finance division.One case, filed by the campaign of Sen. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax County, claimed that his Democratic challenger in the Nov. 6 election, Janet Oleszek, gave an inaccurate or incomplete disclosure statement in a television ad.Cuccinelli also contended in his complaint that Oleszek could not have fully paid for an Oct. 31 television ad buy because her campaign had less than half of the $200,000 cost on hand at the time.The SBE on Monday certified Cuccinelli as winning the race with Oleszek by only 92 votes out of more than 37,000 cast, or less than one-fourth of 1 percentage point. With the results now official, Oleszek has 10 days to ask for a state recount of the election, something she said earlier this month she would do.In the other case, the Democratic Party of Virginia alleged that state Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, R-Fairfax County, claimed to have paid for television ads that her husband, U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis, R-Va., bought through his congressional campaign committee.Devolites Davis lost her seat to Democratic challenger J. Chapman Petersen.Robert R. Sparks Jr., an attorney representing the congressman and his wife, said Devolites Davis authorized and paid for the ads, making her sponsorship disclosure on the ads accurate and compliant with the law. Davis merely paid directly to extend the run of ads that already were running, and there is no requirement that the candidate sponsorship statement be changed, Sharp argued.Board member Harold Pyon questioned the need for referring the issue to a prosecutor."This is mind-boggling. Anybody can accuse anybody, and we send it to (the) commonwealth's attorney. Sending something to the commonwealth's attorney is a serious matter," Pyon said. He voted against referring either complaint for investigation.Jean Cunningham, chairwoman of the three-member board, said the referral was necessary because the SBE has no other way to vet the complaints. And if there was a violation, she said, investigators would have to determine how many times it occurred — the basis for calculating any fine."We're in a Catch 22 position," she said. "We would have to pull a penalty out of the air."
