ABSENTEE BALLOT REQUESTS SURPASS ’16 TOTALS

Current absentee tally is already 54% higher than in 2016 election

Virginia voters aren’t waiting around to make their picks for the 2020 election.

While Election Day is still technically not until Nov. 3, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic prompted state elections officials to clear the way for early and mail-in absentee voting for all voters in an effort to stave off potential outbreaks related to busy polling places.

As a result, nearly 1 million of the state’s 5.8 million registered voters have either already voted early or have requested an absentee ballot, according to numbers from the Virginia Public Access Project.

More than 220,000 of those requests are in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th congressional districts, where the bulk of Hampton Roads voters live. About 15% of registered voters in those districts have already asked for a ballot.

Since in-person early voting started on Friday, 69,261 citizens had cast ballots across the state. Another 5,860 had already returned mailed absentee ballots by Monday. More than 877,000 had requested mail ballots but not yet returned them.

The current absentee tally for the general election is already 54% higher than the absentee votes cast and mail-in ballots requested in Virginia for the 2016 general election, and will continue to rise in the run-up to the election.

In 2016, 29.4% of mail-in absentee ballots that had been requested were not returned. Absentee votes made up about 14.2% of ballots cast in the state that year, according to figures from the Virginia Department of Elections.

The trend is evident across Hampton Roads as well.

In Chesapeake, Registrar Mary Lynn Pinkerman said her office had mailed out 22,321 ballots and had seen 3,363 in person between Friday and Monday.

That’s a nearly 69% increase in absentee votes over the 15,209 total cast in Chesapeake for the 2016 presidential election. And there are still six weeks left until election day.

However, Pinkerman said there has been some confusion between in-person and mail-in absentee voting.

“The biggest issue we are running into is voters who have requested a ballot by mail, but are showing up for early voting in person. If the voter does not have the mailed ballot with them or has not returned it to the Registrar’s Office, they will have to vote a provisional ballot,” Pinkerman wrote in an email.

According to statistics gathered by Virginia Democrats, more than 47,000 people had asked for absentee ballots in Virginia Beach, 21,000 in Norfolk, 15,000 apiece in Newport News and Hampton and 9,200 in Portsmouth.

The current absentee tally for the general election is already 54% higher than the absentee votes cast and mail-in ballots requested in Virginia in the 2016 general election, and will continue to rise in the run-up to the election.