Frequently Asked Questions

Detailed information can be viewed on the Virginia Department of Elections website in the How to Register section. Essentially, you must meet eligibility requirements, complete and submit an application, and return it to the registrar by the election deadline.

On the Virginia Department of Elections website, you can go to the View Your Info page. Additionally, each registered voter should receive a Voter Registration Notice that lists the voting districts, voting location address, voter registration office, etc. An example is below.

With all the new opportunities in Virginia for voting early in person and voting by mail, you might have some questions about how Virginia makes sure that only those voters who are entitled to vote get to have their vote counted – and that those votes are counted accurately.

Allegations about voter fraud and rigged elections in other states have filled the media in the last few years. Dead people voting. Non-citizens voting. People voting in more than one state. Voters pretending to be someone else. People voting twice. People copying mail-in ballots and stuffing drop-off boxes. Voting machines being hacked by cell phones or penetrated by foreign actors.

You need to know how Virginia election officials at the state and local levels work to make sure that none of those things can happen in Virginia.

At the outset, it’s worth noting that election fraud is a serious crime, punishable as a Class 5 or Class 6 felony under Virginia law. That’s a big 1 to 10 years in prison. Someone who impersonates a voter to get one more vote (out of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes) is taking an awfully big risk for a really minuscule payoff.

It’s also worth noting that every aspect of an election is run under the watchful eyes of Democratic and Republican observers, chosen by their respective parties, who make sure that things are being run by the book while keeping a baleful watch on “the other side.”

But let’s assume that making voter fraud a crime and opening elections to public and party scrutiny isn’t enough to keep the system honest. It turns out that, working with the federal government and other states, Virginia elections officials have a robust and effective system in place to ensure fair and honest elections.

Probably the single most important component of the system is the voter registration list run by the Virginia Department of Elections. If you are not registered to vote, you can’t vote. Period. Your registered address must be a real physical address: no post office boxes allowed. And when you vote, whether in person or by mail, the ID information you provide to show that you are, indeed, you, must match the information on the voter registration list. Once you’ve voted, it’s marked on the poll books so you can’t vote again.

So keeping the voter registration list up-to-date is a pretty important behind-the-scenes, year-round job given to each local Registrar’s office.

The Virginia Department of Elections is notified:

• by the Dept of Vital Records of a voter’s death
• by the Post Office or the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that a voter has moved
• by the DMV that a person has indicated to the DMV that they are not a US citizen
• by another state, as part of several inter-state compacts, that a voter has moved from Virginia and registered in the new state
• by the State police of a felony conviction
• by a circuit court that a voter has been adjudged mentally incapacitated

The Department of Elections then notifies the local Registrar who then updates the voter’s registration list accordingly. Thousands of changes are made to voter registration lists every year.

When you vote by mail, you must first apply for a mail-in ballot. Mail-in ballots are mailed only to registered voters on their request and delivered by mail to their registered address. (If a voter is temporarily out of town (for example, college students), they can request the mail-in ballot to be mailed one time to a different address.)

The Registrar immediately records every voter who has been sent a mail-in ballot. So, no dice if you try to order two or three!

• If you apply for a mail-in ballot and also try to vote in person, you’ll be stopped.
• If you vote on election day, you won’t be able to cast your vote on the machine unless you have the mail-in ballot with you and have it voided by the election officer.
• If you don’t have your mail-in ballot, you can vote provisionally, but every provisional ballot is reviewed by the 3-member bipartisan Electoral Board after Election Day and counted only if no mail-in ballot was received.
• If you vote early in person, the election officers will first check to make sure that no mail-in ballot has been received, and you’ll sign a sworn statement that you won’t use your mail-in ballot.

Mail-in ballots are returned to the Registrar (whether by mail or put in the drop-box) in a special security envelope with voter’s name and registered address, signed and affirmed under law by the voter, and signed by a witness (unless the witness requirement is waived during a public health emergency).

So even though the election officials don’t know HOW a voter voted by mail, they do know WHO voted by mail. The voter who was issued that mail-in ballot is immediately marked on the voter registration list as having returned a mail-in ballot. Mail-in ballots that are not in the security envelope (“naked ballots”) are NOT counted.

So, nobody can make fake copies of the blank mail-in ballot or send in ballots that haven’t been sent to them by the Registrar’s office.

Mail-in ballots delivered by mail are handled by the U.S. Postal Service, protected by federal law. Mail-in ballots can also be delivered in person to the Registrar’s office, or dropped off at a secure drop-box set up by the Registrar’s office at locations that vary by locality. and at early voting locations. Some localities may establish additional drop box locations, contact your election office for this information. Drop boxes are also located at every precinct on election day.

Every mail-in ballot is associated with a legitimate voter who requested the ballot, and includes required information on an external envelope that identifies the voter.

When you vote in person (early or on Election day), you are asked to state your name and address, which must match the information on the voter registration list. You also need to show a valid ID required by Virginia law intended to prove that you are who you claim to be. Virginia has a lengthy list of acceptable IDs. Alternatively, a voter may also sign a statement under penalty of perjury that they are the person they claim to be.

Once a voter has cast a ballot in person, the voter is marked on the voter registration list as having voted. So, nobody can vote early in person and then again on Election day.

Also, you know those pre-printed ballots given to you at the polling place? Those are kept under strict control and the election officials know exactly how many they have and will compare those numbers after voting closes. The ballot scanning machine will not read anything other than an officially-printed ballot. So there’s no way to vote more than the one ballot you’ve been given.

Every ballot, whether cast in person or by mail, is scanned and counted on a ballot scanning system. These systems vary by locality. When the paper ballot is scanned, the vote is digitally recorded by the machine and the voter receives a message that the ballot has been counted. But election officials also keep all the paper ballots, in case of the need for an audit or a recount.

No ballot scanner in Virginia is ever connected to the internet nor do they have wired or wireless interconnectivity. In other words, they can’t be hacked. Vote totals can’t be changed.

There are also elaborate procedures to make sure that the voting machines and electronic poll books can’t be physically compromised. Before every election, the bipartisan Electoral Board and General Registrar, in the company of political party observers, test every single voting machine to make sure that each one is accurately reading and recording a sample of paper ballots. The voting machines are then set to “zero”, locked with keys and a tamper-evident seal, and returned to a secure location.

When the election officers (i.e., your neighbors and friends) start up the voting machines at 5:00 a.m. on election morning, under the watchful eyes of party observers and each other, they double-check to make sure that each voting machine has no recorded votes and no paper ballots in the container. During the day, they keep a careful tally of the number of ballots recorded on the voting machine and compare that to the number of ballots given out and the number of voters checked in.

This process is repeated on the day after the election where the number of all ballots counted must match the number of voters who requested, received, and returned a ballot in some manner. Also a survey of all the ballots that were printed is conducted so that every ballot that was printed is accounted for.

Is it a perfect system? Nothing’s perfect. Maybe a truly dedicated individual intent on breaking the law could find a tricky way to throw a vote or two. Historically, most people who have been charged with voter fraud have made mistakes on various forms about their eligibility (felony status and citizenship status in particular) or who simply didn’t know they were breaking the law. But it’s hard to see how a systematic effort to throw an election can get around the safeguards in place.