Sudden Drop in Daily Absentee Tallies
EPEC has asked Dept. of Election officials to explain.
In this issue:
Funny Business in the DAL
The Critical Role That Poll Watchers Play
Training Links
Questions About a One-Day 73% Drop in Ballot Data
Inquiring election observers in Virginia are asking: What is going on with the big drop-off in ballot tallies in the Oct 5th daily absentee list (DAL) from the Dept. of Elections last week?
As the chart from the daily DAL feed from DigitalPollwatchers.org shows (see below), the Oct. 5th report (the prior day’s voting activity), dropped by 73% from the prior day.
The DAL output files are a record of all early voting activity during the general election in Virginia, including in-person and absentee ballot processing status.
As the daily output chart shows, as of Oct. 5th, 2023, the DAL showed 128,301 ballots in Countable status, which means they are on track to be tabulated on Election Day.
That tally time mark was 14:00 hours. We’re not sure how accurate that time stamp is but that’s a story for another day.
Then on Oct 5, at 22:00 hours, the Countable tally fell from 128,301 ballots to just 33,562 ballots in Countable status.
The next day’s Oct. 6th file showed the Countable tally was back up to 114,621, some 13,680 ballots lower than the Oct 5th tally of 128,301.
The Countable counts then followed:
—Saturday, Oct. 7th = 162,731
—Sunday, Oct. 8th = 163,263
—Monday, Oct. 9th = 163,791
—Tuesday, Oct 10 = 170,978 ready to be counted.
See the latest output here on DigitalPollWatchers.org, the development environment of EPEC Team.
Other categories showed a proportionate drop on Oct. 5th DAL data as well. For example, the Pre-Processed tally reflects that a mail-in ballot has been received by the registrar’s office, but has not yet been verified in the public processing phase. That went from about 5,000 on Oct. 5th (time stamp 14:00) to just 80 at the 22:00 time mark.
The Dept. of Elections “Twitter” feed had no mention of it on its Oct 5th or Oct 6th posts, other than a post reminding citizens that the deadline to register to vote by regular ballot methods (in-person, by mail) is Oct. 16. All new registrations received after the deadline will vote a provisional ballot.
Virginia Public Access (VPAP.org), which appears to use the same DAL feed, did not provide a notice or updates about the drop in the DAL countable tally.
Longtime election observers said the issue might relate to a security patch applied to the VERIS voter registration platform, which might have temporarily blocked the DAL feed.
As of Saturday, Oct. 7th, the tallies were said to be caught back up.
The question from the data side of the operation: Did VERIS tech support just replay the ballot data that had dropped out the prior two days?
The concern among election observers and Digital Poll Watchers is whether any records were lost in the issue -- and that Virginia’s election records are complete.
The expectation is that the DAL file for Oct. 7th should have everything from the 5th and the 6th voting activity that were processed, and that it can be confirmed as such.
Candidates on the ballot would likely have legal standing to question whether the outage impacted tallies if their races are close. But it is still early days in the voting process with barely 3% of the voting population having cast a ballot.
But given that the number from the DAL was rendered much lower than the prior day, whatever outage may have caused the problem deserves an official explanation.
EPEC Team will keep you posted.
Why Poll Watching is Critical
The outage on the DAL reports in item #1 above is but one example of why Poll Watchers, Elections Officers are a critically important part of election systems and election management. It can sometimes be a thankless job. But they are key to ensuring transparency in the election system.
Like many states in Covid-year 2020, the Commonwealth assembly mandated many sudden changes to the VERIS system, such as no-excuse absentee balloting, plus a 45-day voting period for registrars to manage.
Many localities in the Commonwealth are still scrambling to get enough observers trained and in place so the thousands of voting precincts across Virginia can achieve parity with authorized observers. We are inching toward the halfway mark of early voting, which ends on Sat. Nov 4th before the General Election on Nov. 7th.
Observers are critical to achieve transparency at the heart of trusted elections.
A well-trained poll watcher (who is “polite and right,” as the trainers say) can help elections officers and workers ensure that new processes align with the intent of statutes they are sworn to uphold.
Virginia’s Same Day Registration (SDR) statute has helped create a new category in precinct staffing: The SDR Specialist.
As for the Same Day Registration rules, the default statute is this: voters are required to vote in the same precinct in which they live.
And as is often the case, the interpretation of the statutes for checking absentee ballot attestations, even voter IDs, can vary among registrars.
Another change: HB 1948 removes the witness requirement for absentee ballots and replaces it with the requirement that the voter provide the last four digits of his social security number and his birth year on the “security” envelope (see image below).
In years’ past, if the witness signature was missing, the absentee ballot was set aside to be “cured.” The registrar would let the voter know of the defect and give them the option of fixing it since the ballot could not be counted without it.
This year it looks like this:
Here’s what the statute says:
The new statute introduces a level of security on voter verification this year to protect against ballot fraud. But it has sparked a new round of debates about how the information is verified in a way that is transparent to the election process.
Stay tuned for more on this.
Another clarification authorized observers have been asking about is the use of the Virginia Driver Privilege card, which is a limited-duration license, permit or special identification card used in Virginia.
According to Virginia’s updated list of acceptable and unacceptable types of Voter ID, the Driver Privilege Card is not accepted.
But it also looks a lot like a regular driver’s license. Per the Dept. of Elections:
“Nearly identical in appearance to driver's license or DMV-issued ID card. Front of card will display "9" under restrictions; back will state that the restriction is "Limited duration," per the Dept. of Elections. (See image below and see PDF of the list here.)
Other changes this year: The rules chart that counties and localities are using to govern how election workers (and SDR Specialists) assess whether a voter is eligible to register to vote in that precinct.
(See the chart which elections officers use to assess a voter’s eligibility.)
Training is Still Going on for Election Observers
If you know someone who wants to observe the voting process, or join us for Digital Poll Watching, thank you for sending along this email.
The nonprofit Virginia Fair Elections Coalition provides a multitude of training sessions each week. The group also has posted an archive of videos to help poll workers “be right and polite” about observing elections.
You can sign up for upcoming courses here.
If you are interested in joining up with the Digital Poll Watchers, the EPEC.info site has a sign up page here. We hope you might consider joining the EPEC Team.
That’s a wrap until the next report from EPEC Team. See you for Poll Watching and Digital Poll Watching. #