Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star via AP
Voters lined up at a polling station in Stafford, Virginia, last November, when the state’s voter ID law was still in force.
While many states are caught up in legal battles over their voting laws and how to run the first-ever coronavirus general election, the Commonwealth of Virginia has steadily been making proactive changes throughout the year. Since Democrats gained total control of Virginia’s state government in January, they’ve worked to pass a litany of legislation important to Democrats, including new gun background checks, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, and, most important for the general election, statewide voting reforms.
Before the coronavirus threatened traditional in-person voting procedures, Virginia Democrats were already in the process of undoing the damage that Republicans had wrought during their years in power. One of the first items on the Democrats’ agenda was to repeal the state’s voter ID law, a process that began in the House of Delegates after the November election, went through committees in February and March, and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam in April.
Democratic elected officials had likened the ID law, which Republicans had enacted in 2012, to Jim Crow–era statutes that sought to keep Blacks from voting. Former NAACP Director Benjamin Chavis said Republicans were trying to “lynch democracy.” The law was part and parcel of Republican efforts, in most states where they controlled the government, to limit minority voting by invoking the specter of voter fraud, though Republican prosecutors have been unable to come up with evidence that any voter fraud is actually occurring. A common Republican solution to this problem was to enact voter ID requirements.
Studies have shown that strict voter ID laws, like the one Virginia had implemented, disproportionately affect minorities, people with low incomes, and the elderly. It’s also unclear how voter ID laws would prevent the voter fraud that GOP lawmakers insist they want to avoid. John McGlennon, professor of government at the College of William & Mary, said the voter ID repeal is not the most impactful change in Virginia, but instead more symbolic of the changes the Democratic leadership is making.
At the same time that the legislature repealed the voter ID law, it also made Election Day an official state holiday, expanded in-person polling hours on Election Day by one hour, implemented automatic voter registration for people using DMV services, and expanded the early-voting period to 45 days before Election Day with no excuse needed—all changes that will increase access to the ballot. While most people are expected to vote by mail, the options for early in-person voting (which Virginia calls in-person absentee voting) will also be important for people who either do not want to vote by mail or find it difficult to because of a disability or language need.
“Voting is a fundamental right, and these new laws strengthen our democracy by making it easier to cast a ballot, not harder,” Northam said in a press release.
Since the coronavirus has progressed across the country, the General Assembly has continued to take action in a special session. To prepare for the general election, Virginia has officially allocated $2 million toward prepaid postage for mail-in ballots and adding ballot drop boxes throughout the state.
Under a new state law, election officials must allow voters to fix any errors on their returned mail-in ballots that would prevent the ballot from being counted. For instance, if the “voter affirmation” on the return envelope is not correctly filled out, that voter will be notified within three days so that they can make the change ensuring their vote will be counted. The legislation also rolled back the witness signature requirement on absentee ballots for this November, which previously had required Virginians to have someone else watch them vote and sign their return envelope.
Some of these changes are on progressive wish lists for legislative reforms in other states or nationally, at least partly in response to declines in voter participation. In Virginia, however, the reforms have come at a time when turnout in elections has been increasing.
“Not that long ago in Virginia, we were at the tail end of states in voter participation,” McGlennon said in an interview with the Prospect. “But more recently, especially since the 2016 election, we have seen a massive surge in participation … [T]he new rules, I think, are really catching up with the tendency of more voters who want to cast ballots and are looking for more options for doing that, especially with the pandemic.”
Democratic elected officials had likened the ID law, which Republicans had enacted in 2012, to Jim Crow–era statutes that sought to keep Blacks from voting.
Virginia has elections every year: The legislature and statewide officials are elected in odd-numbered years. In the three years since Donald Trump was elected, every November general election has had higher voter turnout compared to those in comparable elections four or eight years before. In 2019’s election for the legislature, which did not have any statewide offices on the ballot, 42 percent of registered voters turned out, compared to 29 percent in 2015 and 28 percent in 2011.
The surge in participation can be attributed to Trump, McGlennon says, but one other reason it has worked to Democrats’ advantage in the last few elections is because of the Republicans’ gerrymandering. The demographic changes in the metropolitan suburbs, along with white, well-educated voters (especially women) leaning toward the Democratic Party since 2016, threw off the GOP’s redistricting strategy. McGlennon says the Republican gerrymander at the start of the decade, when they controlled the government, had “assumed suburban voters would continue voting in the way that they had.” Instead, the suburbs have grown more racially diverse, and the president “jolted” a lot of people to re-engage with voting. Both those changes have shifted power away from Trump’s party.
