State officials in Virginia announced this week they’ve created a new unit to investigate possible violations of election law in Virginia, where any evidence of voter fraud is scant and recent elections have run smoothly.

The commonwealth’s Republican Attorney General, Jason Miyares, will lead the unit of prosecutors, attorneys, and paralegals.

The Election Integrity unit, as it’s called, will provide legal advice to the state’s department of elections, investigate and prosecute any violations of election law, and partner with law enforcement to ensure fair elections, according to a press release from Miyares’ office on Friday. The new department is designed to “restore confidence in the our democratic process in the Commonwealth,” the attorney general says in the release. The unit, consisting of more than 20 attorneys, investigators, and paralegals, will work with the 133 local elections boards across Virginia starting with the upcoming election. (Early voting begins in Virginia on Sept. 17.)

But the unit the unit does not appear to be a response to any specific instances of fraud. Miyares’ office has found no widespread voter fraud linked to the 2020 election, spokesperson Victoria LaCivita told DCist.

“The Virginia Department of Elections and Office of the Attorney General have reviewed the 2020 election results, along with hundreds of documents of concerns from citizens and elected officials, and have not seen any evidence of widespread fraud that would change the results of Virginia’s 2020 election,” LaCivita wrote in an email, which included a link to a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, headlined “Democrats Were The First Election Deniers.”

Election-related discrepencies have been rare and mostly vague in the commonwealth. The announcement comes just days after a top Prince William County election official, Michele White, was indicted by a grand jury on fraud charges that allegedly occurred during the time of the 2020 election — although local election officials told DCist/WAMU earlier this week that White’s conduct had no impact on the outcome of the election. Miyares’ office has not released more specific details on the case or what White allegedly did.

In August this year, Miyares’ office was asked by the State Board of Elections to investigate accusations of misconduct in the Nottoway County election office, but the issue was ultimately left up to state police and a county prosecutor. (According to the Virginia Mercury, it’s not clear what those accusations revolve around, but they appear to be rooted in a “small-town political battle” over election office operations.)

“I pledged during the 2021 campaign to work to increase transparency and strengthen confidence in our state elections,” Miyares said in Friday’s release. “It should be easy to vote, and hard to cheat.”

The move follows Miyares’ “law-and-order” approach to the office since assuming the role earlier this year and tracks neatly with his (and Governor Glenn Youngkin’s) rhetoric around “election integrity” on the campaign trail. More broadly, it follows a nationwide movement of Republican leaders cracking down on largely unfounded and unspecified instances of voter fraud, inspired by Donald Trump’s continuing lie that the 2020 election was stolen. This spring, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis created a special police force to investigate election crimes, which issued its first 17 charges last month.

In January, Miyares fired about 30 attorneys, including those who worked on opioid and housing discrimination-related cases, and an entire conviction integrity unit, which investigated past cases for errors that may have resulted in a wrongful conviction. (By February, Miyares had written a letter to General Assembly leaders claiming that his staff couldn’t keep up with its case load.)

Victoria LaCivita told DCist/WAMU that there is no estimated budget for the unit, since it will be made-up of existing employees. Some already deal exclusively with election matters, while others will take on the role in addition to their current responsibilities in the office.

Both Miyares and Youngkin made the security of Virginia elections a talking point during their 2021 campaigns. Youngkin tip-toed around the unfounded conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen by never fully embracing Trump’s lie, but advocating for “election integrity.” While he said on a debate stage that he believed Joe Biden’s victory was “certifiably fair” and without “material fraud,” he also called for an audit of voting machines, and proposed the creation of an “election integrity task force” in his bid for the Republican nomination. As governor, he appointed Susan Beals, ex-aide to “Trump-In-Heels” 2020 election denier Amanda Chase, as the state’s election commissioner.

Miyares’ press release offered few details on how exactly the unit will operate and the specific duties it will carry out in the upcoming election. Had it existed during last year’s election, Youngkin might’ve been investigating his own son, who (unsuccessfully) tried to vote twice.

Virginia lawmakers, like Senators Scott Surovell and Louise Lucas, reacted to Miyares’ new unit on Friday, poking fun at the idea of investigating something that doesn’t exist.

https://twitter.com/ssurovell/status/1568281795837173762

https://twitter.com/SenLouiseLucas/status/1568277610089553927

Margaret Barthel contributed reporting.