NORFOLK, Va. — With sixty days left until the general election, Virginia’s Department of Elections Commissioner Susan Beals updated state lawmakers this week on the Commonwealth's readiness for November 5.
In the last year, several high profile headlines have raised questions about the voter process, including the state's exit from the ERIC data sharing system and the accidental removal of thousands of registered voters from the state’s voter rolls in 2023.
When asked what Beals believed to be the biggest threat to this year's election, she answered without hesitation, expressing concern about the state's recent mail distribution problems.
"We started raising concerns prior to last November elections," she said. "Virginia was a little bit of a canary in a coal mine on the issue of USPS and performance, because we had that statewide election in 2023 and others didn’t, that's their off year."
"We started hearing from General registrars, they’re having issues with mail ballots not being delivered to voters, not getting them back in time, ballots coming back as 'undeliverable' to voters who have been in the same place for a very long time," she continued.
Beals noted there is a particular concern about accessibility of rural voters to absentee and mail-in methods.
“Frustrating for us because every time we’ve raised issues, we’ve been assured they would be addressed. And then in subsequent elections, they’re not addressed, we have the same issues,” she told lawmakers.
Other Key Elections Takeaways
'Things should be faster'
Several changes to election night reporting procedures are expected to make the turnaround time for reporting results faster, according to Beals.
It is now a requirement for localities to pre-process mail-in ballots by the Saturday before Election Day, whereas that was not a requirement for the 2020 Presidential Election.
This should eliminate certain registrars from holding off from processing those ballots on top of their election day haul.
Local registrars were also previously told to continue counting until 11 p.m. and then tabulate for absentee and in-person votes, whereas now they are told to "hit the button" right at 7 p.m. and getting those figures reported.
More Elections Officers
Beals also revealed that there is a new online training program to onboard elections officers before election day, which can substitute for in-person training through the registrar.
With an estimated 20,000 workers needed statewide to help November 5 run smoothly, Beals noted that registrars should be encouraging as many people to sign up to be elections workers as possible.
Virginia’s early voting window begins September 20 and lasts until the Saturday before Election Day.