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Virginia might change how absentee votes get counted
File Photo/Don Del Rosso
Early voters line up at the Fauquier County registrarâs office to cast their ballots in September. Absentee ballots get processed in one total, separate from the precincts in which voters live. Iâll tell you this, if weâre shooting rockets off into space at Wallops Island, we can figure out what precinct a voter is from. Sen. Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg)
⢠Adjourns: Saturday, Feb. 27
Despite lingering, and unfounded, fraud suspicions on the right, a recently issued state report called the 2020 election the âmost safe, secure, and successfulâ in Virginiaâs history.
Michael Pope reports.
Any changes your local government wants to make as to where voting happens would require new scrutiny under a bill introduced by Democratic Senator Jennifer McClellan of Richmond. The change would have to be advertised in advance for public comment or reviewed by the Attorney General s office.
Katie Boyle with the Virginia Association of Counties says that s a burden for local governments. This bill imposes fairly heavy oversight, even to changes that are ministerial such as relocation of polling places, Boyle says.
Senator McClellan says moving precincts is not a ministerial change. Here in the city of Richmond, the registrar s office was moved from downtown on a bus line out to Labernum Avenue not on a bus line in an area that is tucked away where two highways intersect and nobody knew where it was and a lot of people didn t know that change had been made until they showed up at the registrar s office to vote early, McClellan explains.
Virginia is on track to do something governments donât usually do, especially ones run by Democrats â turn away revenue.
Come next summer, Virginia is set to ban the so-called âelectronic skill gamesâ often found in convenience stores, restaurants and truck stops. Virginia was about to ban them this year but Gov. Ralph Northam persuaded the General Assembly to extend their life one year, with the most of their revenue going into a COVID-19 relief fund.
The opposition to these games is curiously bipartisan â two of the most outspoken opponents have been state Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and House Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City.