Month: November 2021

There’s a (IMO frivolous) lawsuit by Mark Elias (here) against the USPO that is causing people to think that there are > 300K outstanding mail-in ballots in VA. According to the VA Dept of Elections data, this is just factually incorrect. There are not 300K outstanding absentee ballots floating around. There is < 100K as per the 11/01/2021 DAL file entries. (Light blue line, logarithmic y axis)

Of the 3 Localities listed in the lawsuit, from the 11/01/2021 DAL File:

	ALBEMERLE COUNTY	JAMES CITY COUNTY	PORTSMOUTH CITY
Total Registered Voters	81738	61961	66696
Total Outstanding Mail In Ballots	2545	1061	1151
Registered / Outstanding * 100	3.1%	1.7%	1.7%

The graph of the breakouts of these 3 counties over time as the DAL files have been updated during the early voting period is shown below. As we see increases in the number of mail in ballots that are in a status state of “Marked” or “Pre-Processed”, we see corresponding decreases in the outstanding “Issued” ballots in all 3 localities. We are NOT seeing a huge buildup of “Issued” ballots that are backlogged as claimed in the lawsuit corresponding to an “October Slowdown” by the USPO. His lawsuit is bunk.

I have been working with a number of different groups for GOTV efforts for the 2021 VA Election, as as such I have been archiving and trending the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data files for a while now. One curious case that I’d love to get somebody at VA ELECT to explain, is why the set of (“Marked” +/or “Pre-Processed”) Ballots for GALAX City has suddenly been reduced to near zero.

As background, the DAL is effectively a transaction log of the status of all early and absentee ballots in VA. When a qualified voter requests a by-mail absentee ballot and it is sent to them a DAL record is created in an “Issued” state. Once it is received the record is updated to “Marked”, and once the ballot has been opened and scanned into a tabulator it is updated to “Pre-Processed”.

In the chart below we can see the number of issued ballots increasing, then decreasing as ballots are received and updated to “Marked” or “Pre-Processed”, but then suddenly (starting with the Oct 26th DAL files) we see the “MarkedOrPre” trace drop to near zero. The only line in this graph that I would ever expect to see decreasing is the number of outstanding “Issued” ballots. So … whats going on here?