It’s always election season in Virginia and this year, the season starts May 2.
That’s the day early voting for the primaries begins. Come November, Virginians will pick a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and representatives in the General Assembly.
Plus, some cities and counties have local offices on the ballot.
But before that, primary elections have to happen.
What are primaries?
Primaries are nominating contests held in the spring to determine who will be on the ballot in November’s general election.
In primaries, political party members run against each other. The parties decide how they pick a winner, and, in some cases, there isn’t a public competition at all.
Candidates must meet certain requirements, such as getting enough signatures to be on the ballot, which several people running for statewide office didn’t accomplish this year.
Dave LaRock, a former delegate from southwest Virginia, and former Chesterfield County state Sen. Amanda Chase planned to challenge Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears for the Republican Party’s nomination for governor. Neither Chase nor LaRock gathered the required number of signatures to qualify as a candidate.
On the Democrats' side, there was no public discussion or competition regarding a gubernatorial candidate: The party identified Abigail Spanberger without others raising a campaign.
How do I vote in a primary?
Virginia runs open primaries. That means you can vote in the Democratic or Republican primary for your district without being a member of either party. You can’t vote in both.
There were previously several methods of voting, depending on the preferences of the party holding the primary, though recent legal changes render most of them obsolete:
- State-run election: Virginia’s Department of Elections handles the election for the political party. It follows the same rules as any other election, but the primary Election Day is in June. Political parties don’t pay for these elections; the money comes out of the Department of Elections budget.
- Party convention: Parties select delegates who then pick a candidate. These can go on for a long time and delegates physically stay in the voting location until a winner is decided.
- Mass meeting or party caucus: This is similar to a party convention, but no delegates are selected. This is technically restricted to party members, though this doesn’t require the voter to be officially registered with any political party. They can declare themselves members of the party upon arriving at the event. Party members all cast a vote in the nomination process.
- Party canvass, unassembled caucus or firehouse primary: Usually called a firehouse primary because it requires a large space, such as a firehouse. Again, this method is technically restricted to party members, but the same declaration rules apply to the mass meeting. Historically, it requires voters to be physically present.
Technically, political parties in Virginia can still choose from any of the above options as a nomination process, but a law passed in 2021 makes anything other than a state-run election effectively impossible to conduct legally.
The law, which went into effect last year, requires absentee voters (such as students who are studying away from home, military voters who are deployed or people who are disabled or sick and can’t get to a convention) to get an opportunity to vote in all elections, including primaries.
The General Assembly created the rule to make it logistically impossible to use any method besides state-run elections. Attorney General Jason Miyares agreed with the interpretation.
“In sum, as of January 1, 2024, political parties are prohibited by (the law) from using a nominating method to the extent that the method, in effect, excludes participation of covered voters,” he wrote in a legal opinion.
“Consequently, any nominational process, including a convention, that precludes them from participating in the nominating process – whether by requiring the voter’s physical presence at a designated location or other factor – is impermissible.”
Miyares’ opinion specifically mentioned party canvases, caucuses and conventions as nominating contests that no longer fulfill the law’s requirements.
Why would I want to vote in a primary?
Participation in primary elections tends to be low. In 2021, the last time statewide races were on the primary ballot, about 8% of registered voters did so.
Old Dominion University political scientist Jesse Richman said those few who do show up do so for a couple of reasons.
For some, it’s a chance to pull the party in one direction or another.
“There are sometimes major disagreements, and that will draw voters out to the extent they want to speak on those issues,” Richman said. “Primaries, partly, are a place to sort out which vision of the party somebody is in favor of.”
For many, the choice will be more practical than ideological.
“Sometimes it's not as much about the issues as it is ‘who's going to be the best candidate for the party heading into the general election?’ ‘Who's going to have the best chance of winning?’” Richman said.
The traditional idea is that primary voters tend to be from the extreme ends of their parties, but Richman said more recent research shows those who turn out tend to be pretty representative of the spectrum of beliefs within the party.
