You might think the election process ends when ballots get counted and reported to the state on election night. But for many election officials, there's much more work to be done.
The morning after the election, local boards of elections return to work and the canvass begins. David Nichols is a former election services manager at the Virginia Department of Elections. He spent nearly seven years helping administer and support Virginia’s annual elections and primaries.
Nichols called the canvass an accounting process because it counts the number of votes cast vs. the number of people registered in the poll book.
Imagine 100 votes were cast - ideally the poll book should show 100 people showed up, but sometimes it doesn’t add up.
“The check-in process is a human process and sometimes somebody gets a little messed up on those, especially when you deal with poll workers who only do this once or twice a year,” Nichols told Radio IQ in an interview.
Nichols noted the room for error because it highlights the opportunities for the system to correct itself. More on that later, but first, back at the canvass, the sealed ballots stay sealed unless an issue arises. They also look at write-in votes as the machine tape also spits out digital images of ballots.
In Virginia there’s some lag time for absentee ballots to come in. They must be postmarked by election day, but they’re due the Friday after - that wait can be pushed further if Friday is a holiday.
Either way, local electoral boards, made up of members of both parties, have 10 days after the election to finish the canvass and certify the votes. If the race is local, that’s where the process stops, but if it’s a multijurisdictional, statewide or federal race, those certified totals, in the form of an abstract, gets sent to the Virginia Board of Elections.
Once in the state board’s hands, the numbers get checked again. A computer system not only keeps the running numbers of votes, it also automatically checks for unusual numbers from a locality.
“They’re literally looking at the results tapes that come off the absentee and early voting machine and saying here’s this and sometimes there can be data entry errors there,” Nichols said.
Notably a state-wide system managed by the Department of Elections requires any changes be entered into a state-wide report which is publicly available.
After the grand tally of votes, taken from local abstracts and checked against the state’s system, is added, physical versions of statewide tabulations are then printed. At a meeting of the State Board of Elections in early December, a member moves to certify the votes and the election is done.
At least ideally. That’s where Jason Torchinsky, a partner at the Virginia law firm of Holtzman Vogel, comes in. He’s been involved in Virginia election disputes for about 20 years. He said the two possible kinds of post-election challenges are recount requests and contests and both require certification before they can be initiated.
Recounts are what he’s seen most often.
“The big decision is do you actually request a recount? Virginia doesn’t do automatic recounts so if you want one you need to go through the statutory process to initiate it,” Torchinsky told Radio IQ. “There’s deadlines, time frames, and Virginia is pretty strict about it, if you miss the deadline or procedure there’s no recount.”
There’s also the cost and logistics - getting volunteers and local election officials, along with poll watchers and attorneys, in the room to conduct the recount. And he’s rarely seen a recount go the way the losing party hopes.
According to the national group Fair Vote, of the nearly 7,000 statewide elections between 2000 and 2023, only three were overturned by a recount.
The second challenge to an election’s outcome is called a contest. Such claims have a high bar to clear, with convincing evidence that something went really, really wrong with the election in order for a court to step in.
Lawyers can also get involved during the canvassing process. They observe and step in when individual ballots are contested - they do that during recounts as well. But again, Torchinsky said the number of votes required to flip an election is high.
There are also constitutional claims that could be brought in federal court, a similarly high bar to cross, but one that leaves room for creative lawyering. And with the many changes made to Virginia’s election laws over the last few years, it could take only one sour candidate to see how far the courts will go.
Torchinsky quoted what he called the election officials' prayer: “Dear God please don’t let this election be close."
"It's true, right?" he added. "You don’t see the problems in the system until the system gets inspected with a fine-toothed comb.”
One new trend among election conspiracy theorists is the local board’s ability to refuse to certify their locality’s election results. Election officials in Waynesboro are currently pressing such a challenge. But Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals suggested such options don’t exist in Virginia while speaking at a recent meeting at the legislature.
“Certification is a ministerial duty. There are avenues for the losing candidate, if they have concerns about the election, they can go through the courts,” Beals told the House Privileges and Elections committee in September.
Election day happens November 5th, early voting has already started.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
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