As President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker wrote in a bipartisan report in 2005, absentee ballots present the greatest danger for voter fraud.

In addition, all forms of voting by mail also present a great danger that legitimate votes will not be registered in official tallies, because of all the problems with sending the absentee ballots out and returning the ballots.

Just this year, over half a million ballots in presidential primary elections around the country were thrown out, and those are just the ballots we know about. It is certain that other lost ballots should be added to that terrible total of disenfranchisement.

And so this proposed regulation by the Board of Elections would be an outrage, an invitation to voter fraud, and a clear and present danger to the rejection of honest ballots cast by citizens of the Commonwealth.

In addition, this regulation is absolutely unlawful for the Board of Elections to promulgate, because the Board has no authority to alter Virginia election law by itself.

There must be a hearing scheduled for this issue, and the regulation must not go into effect.