Del. Convirs-Fowler Talks Disqualification, VA GOP Chair Silent on Del. Wren Williams' Election Filing
Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler says it "looks like the Department of Elections should disqualify" Del. Williams, while State Sen. Mark Peake ignores a FOIA request.
An apparent error on Del. Wren Williams’ (R-Patrick County) 2025 Certificate of Candidate Qualification has caused the Vice Chair of the House Privileges and Elections Committee, Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler (D-Virginia Beach), to suggest candidate disqualification. Meanwhile, the Republican Party of Virginia Chairman, State Sen. Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg), is ignoring a FOIA request, and the Virginia Department of Elections seemingly shifts posture on candidate paperwork.
As I wrote about back in June, every year candidates for office in Virginia have issues with the paperwork they must submit to qualify for the ballot. In 2021, journalist Joan Walsh wrote several articles in The Nation on a particular set of paperwork issues in Virginia, issues that kept three Black Democrats off of the ballot.
From her 2021 article “Are Virginia Democrats Running Progressive Challengers Out of the 2021 Primary?”:
The three challengers—Richmond City Council member Dr. Michael Jones, Arlington legislative aide and activist Matt Rogers, and Dumfries Town Council member Cydny Neville, from Prince William County—come from different corners of the Commonwealth and different backgrounds. Their paperwork problems are different, too—and tedious, as such problems always are. But the state board has routinely granted candidates extensions to solve such problems—at least eight got them in 2020, including GOP congressional candidates Delegate Nick Freitas (who lost) and Bob Good (who won). State law provides for a 10-day “grace period” at the board’s discretion.
While exercising that discretion last year, chair Bob Brink called disqualifying candidates over paperwork errors a “draconian” move. “Doing that would run counter to my personal belief that, as much as possible, we ought to permit access to the ballot and let the voters decide,” Brink told The Roanoke Times. “The board is between a rock and the hard place. We don’t want to be in the position of picking and choosing winners and losers. That’s the voters’ job.” To be fair, Brink also complained that by granting the extensions the board was “giving a pass to the scofflaws at the expense of the candidates who followed the rules.”
But this year, the first time in ages that state Democrats are defending majorities in the General Assembly, the board suddenly made candidates’ paperwork troubles a capital offense, with no grace period to fix them. “I’m not gonna lie,” Jones told me; if flawed paperwork normally doomed candidates, he’d go back to his life as a Richmond pastor and City Council member “and take the L. But granting extensions was their practice. They change the rules in the middle of a pandemic?” The NAACP has asked the board to proceed with extensions “in the same manner it has consistently done in the past,” but there’s no evidence the decision will be reconsidered.
The State Board of Elections went from relatively permissive to strict paperwork enforcement by 2021. In 2025, under the leadership of former Del. John O’Bannon (R-Henrico), the Board and the Department of Elections seem to have reverted back to a permissive stance — at least when it comes to Del. Williams.
Del. Williams’ 2025 Certificate of Candidate Qualification
On August 11, 2025, I sent a FOIA request to the Virginia Department of Elections seeking “the 2025 Certificate for Candidate Qualification for Del. Wren Williams received by ELECT March 14, 2025.” On August 18, 2025, I received the following record in response:
The glaring problem here is that Del. Williams dated his signature “1/6/25” but the notary claimed to have witnessed the signature on “this 6 day of January, 2024.” The notary did not correct or initial the apparent date error.
Va. Code § 47.1-16 states that “every notarization shall include the date upon which the notarial act was performed and the county or city and state in which it was performed.” Yet Va. Code § 47.1-20.1(B) states in part:
“No notarial act performed by a notary public shall be invalidated solely because of the failure of such notary public to perform a duty or meet a requirement specified in this title. However, the validity of a notarial act shall not prohibit an aggrieved person from seeking to invalidate the record or transaction that is the subject of such notarial act or from seeking other remedies authorized by the laws of the Commonwealth or laws of the United States.”
Department of Elections Reviewed Filing & Qualified Del. Williams
Yvonne Rorrer is the Democratic nominee challenging Del. Williams this year in HD47, a district including Galax City and Carroll, Patrick, Floyd, and Henry Counties. As would any competent campaign, her campaign got ahold of this disputed filing, and Rorrer contacted the Virginia Department of Elections.
Rorrer told me that a staff member at the Department returned her initial call, told her the error was a non-issue, and insisted that the Department was standing by its decision. Rorrer says the staffer also told her that had they caught the mistake, they would have sent the form back to Del. Williams for correction. But since they didn’t catch it, they weren’t going to act.
Rorrer asked for this information in written form. Here’s the email she received on August 8, 2025 from Elections Administration at the Virginia Department of Elections:
Ms. Rorrer,
The form in question was submitted by the candidate on March 14, 2025. ELECT received the candidate’s filing, determined sufficient completeness, and notified the candidate on March 26, 2025. The deadline for filing the required form was April 3, 2025. Therefore, it is ELECT’s position that the candidate is qualified to appear on the ballot in the November General Election.
Del. Convirs-Fowler Finds Filing “Concerning” & Sen. Mark Peake Ignores FOIA
Last night, Del. Convirs-Fowler, who serves as vice chair of the Virginia House Privileges and Elections Committee, posted an image of Del. Williams’ flawed filing on her Facebook page and opined:
I was researching election timelines for candidates that serve in the general assembly and in the process, I stumbled across something concerning. Can you find the error of this certificate of Candidate Qualification? Looks like the Department of Elections should disqualify this candidates [sic].
Del. Convirs-Fowler isn’t the only person questioning Del. Williams’ qualification for the ballot this year. I’ve spoken to and seen communications from Republicans in Del. Williams’ district who are deeply concerned about this sloppy paperwork. After being alerted that some local Republicans had written to Virginia GOP Chairman Sen. Peake expressing dismay about Del. Williams’ paperwork, I sent Sen. Peake a FOIA request on August 8, 2025.
I requested “any communications from June of 2025 mentioning or concerning Del. Wren Williams' campaign filings, including but not limited to any communications questioning the legitimacy of his filings” and further instructed the senator’s team to “please search both official and personal mail, email, phone, and messaging accounts.”
Having not received any response within the five working days required by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, I emailed Sen. Peake again on August 19, 2025 and copied Chief Deputy Attorney General Steven Popps, stating:
Good morning, Senator & Staff.
I have not received any response to the August 8, 2025 FOIA request below. If you've sent a response, please forward it to me immediately. Otherwise, I regret to inform you that you're in violation of VA FOIA. I'm cc'ing Mr. Popps from the OAG (which represent members of the GA in FOIA litigation) for their information.
As of today, I still haven’t received any response from Sen. Peake or from the Office of the Attorney General regarding this FOIA request.
Since I’m already the plaintiff in three ongoing FOIA lawsuits around the state, two of which I’m litigating pro se, I’ll likely have to eat this continuing violation of my rights under Virginia FOIA due to lack of resources. As the Department of Elections informed Rorrer, they’re standing by their decision to qualify Del. Williams for the ballot. But this incident raises new questions about the Department’s diligence in checking paperwork — and about the shifting standards for candidate qualification over time.