Absentee Voting FAQ

FROM THE VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF ELECTIONS:

"The Virginia Department of Elections encourages voters to protect their health during COVID-19 outbreak. Voting absentee in the coming elections is strongly encouraged.

EARLY VOTING IN-PERSON

• You can vote early at your local registrar’s office beginning 45 days before Election Day and ending the Saturday before Election Day. Before visiting your local registrar’s office, you may wish to check your registration status or call your registrar’s office. You can find your registrar’s phone number here. To vote early in-person, do the following:
• Starting 45 days before Election Day, visit your local registrar’s office or a satellite voting location in your county or city to vote early. Remember, the Saturday before Election Day is the last day to vote early.
• You do not have to have a reason or fill out an application to vote early.**
• At the registrar’s office or satellite voting location, you must provide your name and address and show an acceptable form of ID or sign an ID Confirmation Statement. To view a complete list of acceptable IDs, please visit our Voting In-Person page. If acceptable identification is not provided, you must sign an ID Confirmation Statement or a provisional ballot will be offered and you are allowed until the Friday at noon following the election to provide a copy of acceptable identification to the electoral board or sign
• an ID Confirmation Statement. Provisional voters receive a notice to remind them of the deadline and right to attend the electoral board meeting.
• Accessible equipment and/or curbside voting is available upon request.

Apply online for a Virginia absentee ballot.

• To request an absentee ballot or update your voter registration, see the Citizen Portal.
• For a list of county registrars/in-person absentee locations, click here.
• For more questions about mail in or in person absentee as well as Election Day voting, see the State Board of Election’s Voter FAQ.

Every morning during the absentee voting period, we get the absentee file from the state and upload it into VoteBuilder. Each locality must get their absentee data to the State Board of Elections, and we receive that data once a day. We then put it into a different format so it can be uploaded. This means there will often be a couple business days between the locality receiving absentee requests and the requests being uploaded to VoteBuilder.

• Our goal is to upload before 10am, but sometimes the state is a little late getting the data to us or there is an issue with formatting, so it is possible the update will not be at the same time every single day. We fully understand that many people around the Commonwealth are counting on this data, so if we have any issues with the absentee upload please know that will be our priority until fixed.
• The "Exclude Already Voted" suppression (under the Absentee tab) may be automatically set if absentee voting for the November general has begun. If you pull a list, it will NOT include people who have voted unless you un-check that box.
• Sunday and Monday uploads tend to be smaller, since most absentee votes are processed during the week.
• We get one update per day from the state, so updates will not occur more than once per day.
• Because some military absentee requests that come from overseas are “automatic” absentee requests, you may see absentee request dates that are months old--this is because the Request Date in these cases is the date the initial request was filed. This means you should not necessarily exclude ‘old’ absentee requests, as any request in VAN is for the election listed. If you want to exclude international mailing addresses, you can do so during the Absentee Label Printing process. Find more legal information about military absentee requests here.

If you have a VoteBuilder problem or question that is not covered here, please fill out a support request and we will address your issue as soon as possible.

Happy voting!