CASEY: Election denier won’t oversee Roanoke city ballot-counting in 2024 (2024)

More than a few eyebrows arched in the Star City last year after a local Circuit Court judge appointed a 2020 election denier to the Roanoke City Electoral Board.

That was Al Bedrosian, the former Roanoke County supervisor who once represented the Hollins Magisterial District. (You might recall Bedrosian captured that seat by drawing lots out of a black bag after his GOP primary ended in a tie, 389-389.)

The conservative Republican served on the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors until 2017. At some point later, he quietly moved to southwest Roanoke’s Deyerle neighborhood. And that’s what made him eligible for the city’s electoral board beginning Jan. 1, 2023.

Recently, however, Bedrosian moved again, this time out of Roanoke to the Smith Mountain Lake area. That has rendered him ineligible to continue on the Roanoke City Electoral Board. Bedrosian’s final meeting was May 13, said Roanoke Registrar Andrew Cochran.

His appointment last year was a subject of controversy, because Bedrosian believes — or at one time believed — that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election by “millions” of votes.

It appears that this November, Trump and President Joe Biden will square off in a rematch. And the Roanoke City Electoral Board members will be in charge of certifying that vote.

In the 2020 general election in Roanoke, Trump pulled 15,602 out of 43,323 votes, or 36% of the total.

Within days of Biden’s inauguration, Bedrosian said on a local podcast that he believed Trump had won the election easily. Bedrosian did not, however, specifically dispute the Roanoke or Virginia vote totals.

In 2020, Biden won the commonwealth of Virginia by nearly half-a-million votes, pulling 2,413,568 to Trump’s 1,962,430, according to the Virginia Department of Elections. Statewide, Biden beat Trump 54% to 44%.

“I think [Trump] won, actually,” Bedrosian said on the Jan. 28, 2021 YouTube podcast of “U Can’t Say That” (it’s still online.) “I think he won by millions of votes. I don’t think he lost. I think we’re seeing stuff not clearly.”

It’s not clear whether Bedrosian still holds those same beliefs. He didn’t return phone calls or a text about his recent departure from Roanoke, or the board, on Friday.

Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea hailed Bedrosian’s departure.

“Anyone who has that kind of mindset doesn’t need to be around our elections this year,” Lea said from Denver, Colorado, on Friday. (He was there with some other city officials to find out if Roanoke will once again be named an “All America City.”)

Cochran said the Roanoke Republican Committee has submitted three names to the judges of the Circuit Court for Roanoke. Traditionally, the presiding judge chooses from among the list to make the appointment. That’s Judge Chris Clemens.

Clemens appointed Bedrosian effective Jan. 1, 2023, because Bedrosian’s name was atop a list proposed by the city Republican Committee.

Each of Virginia’s counties and independent cities has its own, three-person electoral board that administers all elections held in a locality, including those for state and federal offices. Appointed members must be residents of the jurisdiction in question and, and board members serve staggered three-year terms.

When Virginia’s governor is a Republican, there are two Republicans on each local electoral board, and vice-versa when the governor’s a Democrat.

Currently, Roanoke’s board has two members: Chairman Charles Snell, a Republican appointee, and Secretary Stephen Niamke, a Democratic appointee. As recently as Friday afternoon, Bedrosian was still listed as the electoral board’s vice-chair.

During his Jan. 28, 2021 podcast, Bedrosian also mused openly about getting involved in elections on a granular level.

“I’d be very interested in this whole registrar’s office thing and how you really stay more on top of that even in a place like Roanoke city, Roanoke County, Salem,” Bedrosian said.

During a later broadcast of the same podcast, on March 9, 2021, Bedrosian told Aldridge that Democrats had quit trying to attract votes through policymaking, and were instead relying on election fraud to stay in power.

“I guess, there was a time when you needed some kind of policy at the end of the day that was good for the average person, because when it comes time to vote, that person looks at his pocketbook and starts voting for the one that helped them the most,” Bedrosian said.

“But it seems now, if also combined with what you’re saying, you also fix the elections, and you have, uh, sketchy if not total fraud in elections, you don’t even need any of your policies to really work anymore. You just do them, and when election time comes around you still win, because who knows if the votes were real or not?

“And the Democrat wins again and everybody says ‘Oh, I guess they were doing a good job,’ even though everyone starts suffering from the policies.”

Bedrosian’s first meeting as an electoral board member was Jan. 23, 2023. Just prior to it, he declined to say whether he still believed Trump had won the 2020 election. He called that question irrelevant, and said, “this has nothing to do with Roanoke city.”

During the meeting, Bedrosian spent roughly three minutes concocting a voter fraud scenario based on Virginia election law. Although that requires voter ID displaying a name and address, Virginia does not require photo ID for voters. Voters may use non-photo forms of ID, such as a utility bill or a bank statement.

Near the end of the meeting, Bedrosian fantasized about borrowing the electoral board chairman’s water bill and passing himself off as Charles Snell to vote.

“So I come in and I have — Charles [Shell] gave me his utility bill. So I come in, I know where he lives, he, he wants me to come vote for him, he doesn’t want to go vote,” Bedrosian said. “So he just gives it to me. I come in and vote. So I come in and give that utility bill. I know where he lives, I know that, and I can vote for him?”

Cochran said at Bedrosian’s final board meeting May 13, “he said he had learned a lot, and that things were quite a bit different that he had thought they were.”

“His term on the board was enlightening as to the process,” Cochran said.