Early voting ahead of the November 7 election began in Virginia on September 22, including the do-over for the controversial $562 million Richmond Grand Casino project.
Voters narrowly defeated the project in 2021, but since then several levels of approval have been granted to allow a second referendum on the issue.
According to the city elections office, as of October 18, 4 percent of eligible voters had cast their vote. Those living in the 8th District, where the proposed casino would be located, cast 928 early votes, the most out of the then-total of 5,242.
The city’s elections office does not have totals from the same point in early voting for 2021, according to the registrar, making it difficult to compare this year’s early turnout to 2021. That election also included the governor’s race between Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe.
Developers of the proposed Richmond Grand Casino, Urban ONE and Churchill Downs, and their pro-casino committee, Richmond Wins, Vote Yes, have raised more than $8.4 million and spent $6 million in August and September, the largest amount ever allocated for a local referendum in state history, for outreach and advertising, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.
The anti-casino campaign, No Means No Casino, raised more than $260,000 since late July—with $100,000 donated by philanthropists Barbara and Jim Ukrop—and spent most of it through the end of September.
The head of the anti-casino committee, political activist Paul Goldman, the former Virginia Democratic Party chairman, recently won his lawsuit against the state Board of Elections. The lawsuit named Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals and members of the state Board of Elections, who denied his request to purchase lists of individuals who voted in Richmond in 2021 and 2022. Goldman’s suit claims the Department of Elections violated his First Amendment rights by refusing to provide the voter list for his anti-casino campaign.
The case was filed in a Richmond city court but was transferred to federal court, where on October 20, U.S. District Court Judge M. Hannah Lauck ordered the board to give Goldman the voter registration lists he requested.
However, with early voting going on and Election Day coming up quickly, Goldman said his campaign has been irretrievably damaged. He said he received one voter list from 2021 since the judge’s order but it contained only 44,000 voters’ names, much less than the total votes cast in the casino referendum that year.
In a broadcast interview, Goldman said, “These are the top election officials in the state. Some have even run for office. Of course, they knew they were damaging me. The election will be over by the time I get these lists, but what I got is what I got. I’ve lost weeks of running the campaign I wanted to run. I don’t have time to be ticked off, I’ve got a campaign to run. Yeah, I’m furious, but it’s not going to help me.”
