Below you will find the current summary data and graphics from the VA 2023 General Election Daily Absentee List files. We pull the DAL file everyday and track the count of each specific ballot category in each daily file.
Note: Page may take a moment to load the graphics objects.
Linear Scale Plot:
Place your cursor over the series name in the legend at right to see the series highlighted in the graphic. Place your cursor over a specific data point to see that data points value.
Logarithmic Scale Plot:
The logarithmic plot is the same underlying data as the linear scale plot, except with a logarithmic y-scale in order to be able to compress the dynamic range and see the shape of all of the data curves in a single graphic. Place your cursor over the series name in the legend at right to see the series highlighted in the graphic. Place your cursor over a specific data point to see that data points value.
Summary Data Table:
The underlying data for the graphics above is provided in the summary data table.
Additional Data:
Additional CSV datasets stratified by Locality, City, Congressional District, State House District, State Senate District, and Precinct are available here.
Data column descriptions:
“ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “ISSUED”
“NOT_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “NOT ISSUED”
“PROVISIONAL” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “PROVISIONAL” and APP_STATUS=”APPROVED”
“DELETED” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “DELETED”
“MARKED” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “MARKED” and APP_STATUS=”APPROVED”
“ON_MACHINE” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “ON_MACHINE” and APP_STATUS=”APPROVED”
“PRE_PROCESSED” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “PRE-PROCESSED” and APP_STATUS=”APPROVED”
“FWAB” := Number of DAL file records where BALLOT_STATUS= “FWAB” and APP_STATUS=”APPROVED”
“MAIL_IN” := The sum of “MARKED” + “PRE_PROCESSED”
“COUNTABLE” := The sum of “PROVISIONAL” + “MARKED” + “PRE_PROCESSED” + “ON_MACHINE” + “FWAB”
“MILITARY” := Number of DAL file records where VOTER_TYPE= “MILITARY”
“OVERSEAS” := Number of DAL file records where VOTER_TYPE= “OVERSEAS”
“TEMPORARY” := Number of DAL file records where VOTER_TYPE= “TEMPORARY”
“MILITARY_COUNTABLE” := Number of DAL file records where VOTER_TYPE= “MILITARY” and where COUNTABLE is True
“OVERSEAS_COUNTABLE” := Number of DAL file records where VOTER_TYPE= “OVERSEAS” and where COUNTABLE is True
“TEMPORARY_COUNTABLE” := Number of DAL file records where VOTER_TYPE= “TEMPORARY” and where COUNTABLE is True
Editorial Note:
When we first started receiving DAL data files on Sept-14-2023 after our purchase from ELECT, we noticed that there were a dozen or so records that were marked as being in a countable state, including records that should correspond to In-Person-Early votes. This is problematic as in person early voting facilities were not opened until Sept-22-2023. We respectfully raised this issue with the dept of elections and they acknowledged the error and directed registrars to correct the issues before the official start of early voting. (This can be observed in the logarithmic plot with the Overseas_Countable, On-Machine, Provisional, and Pre-Processed counts being reset to 0 on 9-21-2023.) We’d like to take a moment to thank the folks at ELECT and the registrars for listening to our concerns and correcting these errors before the start of early voting. Credit where credit is due.
All data purchased by Electoral Process Education Corp. (EPEC) from the VA Dept of Elections (ELECT). All processing performed by EPEC.
If you like the work that EPEC is doing, please support us with a donation.
After reading through the press release we decided to independently try to verify the claims in the release. Note that an analysis like this has been on our list of things-to-do, but there are only so many hours in the day! The fact this press release was issued gave us a well deserved prod to complete this analysis.
EPEC has purchased the entire statewide registered voter list data from the VA Department of Elections (ELECT) and has current records as of 2023-08-01. Eligible parties can purchase data from ELECT via their website here.
The necessary data from the US Census office can be downloaded here and included the estimates of the eligible voting age citizens in each county. From the documentation on the census site, the “cvap_est” field in the census data represents “The rounded estimate of the total number of United States citizens 18 years of age or older for that geographic area and group.”
It is therefore a straightforward process to accumulate the number of registrant records in each county, as well as accumulating the number of eligible voting age citizens and compute the registration percent “REG_PCT” as (# Registered / # Eligible * 100). The below table has the results of this direct computation for each county.
The results are only slightly different than the results presented by Honest Elections Project, but still show significant issues with 38 counties being over 100%.
Adjusting for population growth since 2020 census
As the census redistricting data is circa 2020, and the eligible voter data was estimated for 2021, we can attempt to account for population shifts since the 2020 census data was collected and the voter eligibility data was computed. The US Census bureau also makes available the estimates of population growth by county year-over-year since the date of the last census here, which we can use to find the recent rates of growth or decline for each county. We can then use these rates to adjust the number of eligible voter estimates to scale with the most recent rates of population change. This is admittedly an approximation and assumes a linear relationship, but it is arguably better than taking the 2020 census and 2021 eligible voter estimates and applying them directly to the latest (2023) RVL.
The REG_PCT_ADJ column in the table below represents this adjusted estimate.
Active vs inactive registrations
An additional consideration that can be made with this data, is to attempt to consider only “Active” voter registrations vs registrations with any status assigned. Note that “Inactive” voter registrations can be immediately returned to “Active” status by simply having any type of interaction with the department of elections (or through DMV, etc), and the registrant will then be allowed to vote. Because of this easy ability to change “Inactive” records to “Active”, it is most appropriate (IMO) to include them in this analysis. However, for completeness, and in order to bound the scope of the issue, the corresponding REG_PCT_ACTIVE and REG_PCT_ADJ_ACTIVE columns have also been computed which only consider “Active” voters.
Results
Even the most forgiving analysis we could compute with the official data from US Census and VA ELECT, which only considers active voters and attempts to adjust for population change since the census, still results in multiple (6) counties in VA having more than 100% registered voters than eligible voters, and many counties that had over 90%.
The most appropriate metric to consider, in my opinion, is the Adjusted and either Active or Inactive status results, as inactive status registrations can still be converted to active status and voted. There were 36 localities with over 100% in this category and 59 between 90% and 100%. There are 133 voting localities in total in VA.
The summary tabulated data and graphics for each of the methods of analyzing the data is presented below.
