Registrar: Don’t expect results on election night in Hampton Roads
If you’re planning to stay up late to hear if your candidate won on Election Day, you might as well get the extra sleep.
City election registrars around Hampton Roads — the ones who could spare a minute or two to talk — are warning that the public shouldn’t expect to see solid results from local, state or federal races on election night.
It’s been a whirlwind of a season for election officials, as laws were tweaked from week to week, requiring updated processes or overhauls to ballots themselves. But the biggest change in Virginia came from lawmakers prior to the pandemic.
At its January session, the newly-Democratic General Assembly made a change allowing absentee ballots to be counted until the Friday past Election Day, so long as they’re postmarked by that Tuesday.
It expands access for voters, but means all votes can’t be counted until Nov. 6.
“People should look at it not as election night, but election week,” said Jessica Bowman, deputy commissioner at the Virginia Department of Elections.
Mary Lynn Pinkerman, Chesapeake’s registrar, said her office usually received a fair amount of absentee ballots past Election Day. They didn’t throw them away outright, instead keeping them at the courthouse in case needed. But they were never counted if they came in past 7 p.m.
This year, her staff will be counting mailed ballots for several days after the election, through noon on Friday.
Voters also have until noon Friday to correct any mistakes on their ballot that would render it
invalid.
Another change is drop boxes for absentee ballots at polling places. In previous elections, absentee voters could only drop off ballots at the main registrar office or get a new in-person ballot at a polling place, Pinkerman said. Now they can drop them and be on their way.
City staff will have to collect those ballots on election night on top of whatever’s being mailed in.
Pinkerman said Chesapeake had mailed out about 28,000 absentee ballots as of earlier this week.
About 24,000 people had already voted early in person as well, a huge jump from past elections.
Virginia is one of 21 states that allow pre-processing of absentee ballots, meaning they can start being prepared for counting — including opening envelopes, verifying signatures and so on — as soon as they arrive. Some crucial swing states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin can’t start until Nov. 3.
Virginia cannot actually tally the votes until Election Day, though.
Earlier this month, two members of the Virginia Beach Electoral Board said such pre-processing sessions dramatically decrease the time it takes to count votes the day of the election.
The city has scaled up the sessions this year to meet the massive increase in absentee ballots. They’re expecting over 100,000.
Results on election night have never technically been official. But because votes had to be in by then, they usually better reflected the final outcome.
Localities must certify their results this year by Nov. 10, Bowman said. Local offices then send results for bigger elections — state and federal races — to the State Board of Elections, a three-member body.
The board will meet to certify results on Virginia’s legal deadline of Nov. 16, Bowman said. In other states, it could be earlier or later.
In the weeks leading up to sending out absentee ballots, rules
were changed nixing the requirement for a witness signature and mandating the inclusion of prepaid postage on return envelopes, said Christine Lewis, deputy registrar in Virginia Beach.
That meant her office had to go back and put stamps on and remove existing instructions on the ballots.
“We’re adapting on a day-today basis,” Lewis said. “It’s a very fluid process. We’ve been working 80-hour weeks.”
Meanwhile about 1,000 people a day in Virginia Beach are voting early, she said. “Maybe we won’t have turnout so bad on Election Day.”
The constant changes have been “our worst nightmare come true,” Pinkerman added. Registrars “don’t like to do new stuff on a presidential election. It kind of goes against the grain of everything we’ve been told.”
On election night, staff would usually be working long into the
night, trying to get accurate totals, Pinkerman said. This year, state officials have told them to try and get as much as they can by 11 p.m.
Before “we stayed until we got everything done with what had come in,” she said. “Now there’s not that stipulation because we know we’re going to be counting the next few days anyway.”
Results from localities get fed in real time to the state election department’s database.
But that doesn’t mean voters can expect to refresh the state results website at 11:02 p.m. and come away with solid answers, Bowman said.
If you’re looking at the website that night, expect to see a large number of votes categorized under the “central absentee precinct.” That will include not only absentee ballots but also those who voted early in person.
It won’t, of course, include absentee ballots that haven’t yet been processed.
It’s likely voters could see a situation where, on Nov. 3, results lean toward a particular candidate but start swinging in the opposite direction as absentee ballots flood in later in the week.
“If numbers do change, nothing nefarious is going on,” Bowman emphasized. “Registrars across the commonwealth are going to do all they can to get results to the public in a timely manner but more importantly an accurate one.”
Pinkerman wants voters to be prepared for uncertainty days after the election.
“I don’t think people have any idea what’s coming down the pike,” she said. “It does catch people off guard.”
The earlier people vote, the more accurate the election night totals will be.
More than a million Virginians have so far.
Bowman’s best advice? Get your ballots in now.
The last day to request a mail-in ballot in Virginia is Oct. 23. The last day to vote early is Oct. 31. Visit https://www.elections.virginia. gov/ for more information.