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Non-citizen registrations with previous voting history in VA election data – update Sep 2026

We have updated our previous analysis (see March 2024, July 2024, Sept 2024, Oct 2024, Nov 2024, Dec 2024, March 2025, August 2025, Jan 2026 and June 2026 posts) with the latest information from the VA Department of Elections data.

Abstract:

Using data provided by the VA Department of Elections (“ELECT”), we have identified at least 8,129 unique registrations that were self-identified as “Declared NonCitizen” and removed from the voter rolls since May of 2023.

Of those 8,129 removals of self-declared noncitizens — which Virginia’s constitution prohibits from registering and voting, we see 1,384 registrations with a corresponding record of ballots cast, according to the statewide Voter History List (VHL) record.

That brings the number of ballots cast by declared noncitizens to 4,056, according to official records. Those are the records we know about.

In addition, the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data of Virginia’s 45-day early voting period shows an additional ten (10) noncitizen registrations and ballots — none of which are found in the Voter History List (VHL), the final tally of who voted.

Therefore, we see 4,066 illegal ballots cast by self-identified noncitizens, from 1,394 registrants who were removed from the voting rolls after self-declaring themselves as ineligible noncitizens. That’s according to the official Voter History List (VHL) and early voting data found in the Daily Absentee List (DAL) reports.

Voting as an ineligible individual is a Class 6 felony voting violation in Virginia.

Background on non-removal policy

After our initial post on this topic in March 2024, we submitted all of the relevant information for investigation to then-Attorney General, Jayson Miyares (R).

We did not hear back, nor did we receive any response or update on the matter. We are not aware of any action by the AG’s office on these apparent violations since 2024.

At the time in 2024, the Arlington County Electoral Board undertook its own investigation and voted 3-0 to send the information to the AG’s office as well. Fairfax County’s Electoral Board also issued a new policy on referring noncitizens with voting records to the Commonwealth Attorney. The policy stated:

“The General Registrar shall refer all individuals who were removed from the voter rolls pursuant to Va. Code § 24.2-427(C), after being identified by ELECT as noncitizens, to the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the Attorney General to determine if they have violated Virginia elections law.”

In October 2024, during early voting for the presidential election, the League of Women Voters along with the Biden Department of Justice sued VA, asking for an injunction to place approximately 1,600 removed noncitizen registrations back on the voter rolls. After two lower courts granted the injunction, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the case, and the noncitizen removals proceeded as the litigation played out.

It is EPEC’s opinion that the Commonwealth of VA was correctly applying the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in this matter under the Youngkin administration and AG Miyares, as I detailed in an X.com post on Oct 12.

In 2025, the incoming Trump DOJ dropped the Biden DOJ’s lawsuit against VA; the League of Women Voters continued the litigation.

In April of 2026, Virginia’s Democrat Attorney General Jay Jones issued an advisory opinion to the Department of Elections that effectively adopts the same position of the challengers in the Biden DOJ / LWV lawsuit.

ELECT followed this advisory opinion with guidance to registrars instructing them not to remove any noncitizen voters within the NVRA’s 90-day “quiet period” around any federal election, including primaries.

As of May 6th 2026, ELECT is no longer populating noncitizen data into “hoppers” that are used to notify Commonwealth registrars of tasks that require their action.

Instead, ELECT has instructed registrars to change the categorization of existing flagged items in the hopper from “notify voter” to “needs research.”

Fairfax County’s Board of Elections has also apparently moved off its referral policy regarding noncitizens with voting records (as reported in its February 2026 Electoral Board meeting).

See Jones’ April 16, 2026 letter to VA Commissioner of Elections Steven Koski here.

We believe this interpretation is impacting the number of self-identified noncitizens that are removed and reflected in the Monthly Update Service (MUS). We have already seen an order of magnitude difference in the data since June 1, 2026, which covers the May time-period in the new policy.

Voter-List Maintenance Obligations:

As part of its responsibilities under law, the VA Department of Elections is required to identify and remove invalid or out-of-date registration records from the voter rolls.

One situation for removal is when a registrant has been determined (via self identification) to be a noncitizen. The VA Constitution prohibits noncitizens from voting in VA elections.

“In elections by the people, the qualifications of voters shall be as follows: Each voter shall be a citizen of the United States, shall be eighteen years of age, shall fulfill the residence requirements set forth in this section, and shall be registered to vote pursuant to this article. …” VA Constitution, Article II, Section 1. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article2/section1/

Additionally, according to VA Code Section 24.2-1004, the act of knowingly casting a ballot by someone who is not eligible to vote is a Class 6 felony.

EPEC’s Analysis Methodology:

ELECT makes available for purchase by qualifying parties various data sets, including the registered voter list (RVL) and the Voter History List (VHL).

Additionally, ELECT provides a Monthly Update Service (MUS) subscription that contains (almost) all of the Voter List changes and transactions for the previous period.

The MUS datasets carry an “NVRAReasonCode” field that is associated with each transaction that gives the reason for the update or change in the voter record. This is in accordance with disclosure and transparency requirements in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

One of the reason codes for records that are removed is “Declared Non-Citizen.”

EPEC has been purchasing and archiving these official records as part of our nonprofit mission to document and educate the public about elections processes, and drive voter participation.

If you are interested in supporting this work, please head on over to our donation page, or to our give-send-go campaign to make a tax-deductible donation.

EPEC looked at the number of records associated with unique voter identification numbers identified for removal from the voter record due to non-citizenship status, per entries in the monthly updates (MUS).

We correlated those results with our accumulated Voter History List (VHL) information to determine whether noncitizen registrations had corresponding records of ballots cast in previous elections.

We only considered those records that are currently in a non-active state as of the latest MUS transaction log. Some determinations of non-citizenship status in the historical MUS transaction log might have been due to error and subsequently corrected and reinstated to active status.

Important to note: We are not considering those records that had a “Declared Non-Citizen” disqualification, but were subsequently reinstated and reactivated by ELECT.

Other Gaps to Note:

While EPEC has periodically purchased full copies of the Voter History List for our archives, there is a known issue with the way ELECT handles removals from the voter record that can cause sampling issues — depending on the time the VHL file is purchased. The result: Records of some legitimately cast ballots can be missing from the VHL due to this policy.

Namely, when ELECT removes an ineligible voter from the voter list, it also removes all instances of that registration’s voter ID from its voter history information and other data files that it provides to qualified organizations. (In my opinion, that process eliminates important voting information and thus is not a good way to manage the data, but that is the way it is done).

In light of that, EPEC also used its archived versions of the Daily Absentee List (DAL) early voting files to check records of ballots cast that might otherwise be eliminated from the VHL.

Results:

There were 8,129 unique voter records marked for removal with the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen” and not subsequently reinstated in the accumulated MUS record that EPEC began collecting in mid-2023. Of those 8,129 there were 1,384 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 4,056 associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019. Figure 1 below shows the distribution of non-citizen voters in the cumulative MUS file history. The blue trace represent the total identified and CANCELED non-citizen registrations, and the yellow trace represents the number of those records that also had corresponding records (at least 1) in the accumulated voter history data.

Figure 1: Distribution if the number of identified non-citizen records and ballots in the cumulative ELECT MUS file history. The x-axis is the date that a record was marked as CANCELED for the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen”.

Note that the data contained in the MUS updates often covers more than a single month’s period. In other words, the individual MUS files are oversampled. Subsequent MUS files can therefore also have repeated entries from previous versions, as their data may overlap. Our analysis used the first unique entry for a given voter ID marked as “Declared Non-Citizen” in the cumulative MUS record, that had not been subsequently reinstated, in order to build Figure 1. This data oversampling in the MUS may help explain the relative spike in the first (May 2023) bin compared to subsequent months.

As VHL information can be incomplete depending on the time the VHL data was purchased in relation to the time that registrants were removed from voter records, EPEC also checked these non-citizen removals against the archived history of Daily Absentee List (DAL) files that EPEC has accumulated.  There were an additional ten non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data that were not contained in the Voter History data.  The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 4,066 by 1,394 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.

These identifications represent only the individuals who declared themselves as non-citizen status through official interactions with ELECT, DMV, or other agencies. Each removed registrant was then contacted by the registrar to confirm their non-citizen status prior to removal, as is the current policy. (Again … we are only considering those records that we’re flagged as “Declared Non-Citizen”, removed and never reinstated.)

The distribution of identified non-citizen voters per VA locality is given below in Table 1. It should be noted that each ballot record has a specific locality associated with it stating where the ballot was cast, whereas unique individuals might move between localities over time. The assignment of unique identified individuals to each locality in table 1 is therefore based on the locality listed in the specific MUS “Declared Non-Citizen” record for that individual, while the assignment of ballot cast to Localities is based on the individual VHL/DAL records. A person could have lived and voted multiple times in one county, then moved to another county and voted again before finally being determined as a non-citizen. The same person would have generated multiple VHL/DAL records for each ballot cast, and associated with potentially different localities. This should be kept in mind when attempting to interpret Table 1.

LOCALITY_NAMEREMOVEDVOTED_VHLVOTES_VHLVOTED_DAL_NOT_IN_VHL
ACCOMACK COUNTY20170
ALBEMARLE COUNTY8119730
ALEXANDRIA CITY28433660
ALLEGHANY COUNTY0000
AMELIA COUNTY5290
AMHERST COUNTY1000
APPOMATTOX COUNTY3000
ARLINGTON COUNTY24740840
AUGUSTA COUNTY399190
BATH COUNTY2000
BEDFORD COUNTY214100
BLAND COUNTY1130
BOTETOURT COUNTY5000
BRISTOL CITY3160
BRUNSWICK COUNTY3260
BUCHANAN COUNTY0000
BUCKINGHAM COUNTY5000
BUENA VISTA CITY0000
CAMPBELL COUNTY2060
CAROLINE COUNTY15260
CARROLL COUNTY175160
CHARLES CITY COUNTY73140
CHARLOTTE COUNTY2000
CHARLOTTESVILLE CITY4712400
CHESAPEAKE CITY174511570
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY483591900
CLARKE COUNTY13460
COLONIAL HEIGHTS CITY25240
COVINGTON CITY4010
CRAIG COUNTY3230
CULPEPER COUNTY487220
CUMBERLAND COUNTY1000
DANVILLE CITY435130
DICKENSON COUNTY3110
DINWIDDIE COUNTY186250
EMPORIA CITY5000
ESSEX COUNTY8240
FAIRFAX CITY318240
FAIRFAX COUNTY14042486042
FALLS CHURCH CITY8250
FAUQUIER COUNTY415110
FLOYD COUNTY0000
FLUVANNA COUNTY52100
FRANKLIN CITY1000
FRANKLIN COUNTY115160
FREDERICK COUNTY374100
FREDERICKSBURG CITY473100
GALAX CITY5000
GILES COUNTY3000
GLOUCESTER COUNTY9361
GOOCHLAND COUNTY9000
GRAYSON COUNTY4141
GREENE COUNTY16390
GREENSVILLE COUNTY1000
HALIFAX COUNTY10120
HAMPTON CITY13432890
HANOVER COUNTY334140
HARRISONBURG CITY1579180
HENRICO COUNTY33818800
HENRY COUNTY1020
HIGHLAND COUNTY0000
HOPEWELL CITY1000
ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY41120
JAMES CITY COUNTY6210330
KING AND QUEEN COUNTY3270
KING GEORGE COUNTY10110
KING WILLIAM COUNTY31120
LANCASTER COUNTY3210
LEE COUNTY0000
LEXINGTON CITY1130
LOUDOUN COUNTY4641092800
LOUISA COUNTY153190
LUNENBURG COUNTY2000
LYNCHBURG CITY478220
MADISON COUNTY1000
MANASSAS CITY10410320
MANASSAS PARK CITY46390
MARTINSVILLE CITY17430
MATHEWS COUNTY0000
MECKLENBURG COUNTY157180
MIDDLESEX COUNTY3110
MONTGOMERY COUNTY315211
NELSON COUNTY41100
NEW KENT COUNTY116220
NEWPORT NEWS CITY228501670
NORFOLK CITY225381440
NORTHAMPTON COUNTY6140
NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY3270
NORTON CITY1000
NOTTOWAY COUNTY9160
ORANGE COUNTY95130
PAGE COUNTY0000
PATRICK COUNTY5120
PETERSBURG CITY517240
PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY196250
POQUOSON CITY1000
PORTSMOUTH CITY11440960
POWHATAN COUNTY5180
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY143110
PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY32350
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY9031424011
PULASKI COUNTY14470
RADFORD CITY1010
RAPPAHANNOCK COUNTY3000
RICHMOND CITY336561861
RICHMOND COUNTY1000
ROANOKE CITY18212300
ROANOKE COUNTY34450
ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY0010
ROCKINGHAM COUNTY7616450
RUSSELL COUNTY9390
SALEM CITY14210
SCOTT COUNTY64170
SHENANDOAH COUNTY38280
SMYTH COUNTY104190
SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY0000
SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY1335120
STAFFORD COUNTY22632712
STAUNTON CITY7000
SUFFOLK CITY81301141
SURRY COUNTY2000
SUSSEX COUNTY2130
TAZEWELL COUNTY7110
VIRGINIA BEACH CITY374793130
WARREN COUNTY284120
WASHINGTON COUNTY144100
WAYNESBORO CITY3020
WESTMORELAND COUNTY7000
WILLIAMSBURG CITY18460
WINCHESTER CITY45560
WISE COUNTY3230
WYTHE COUNTY3000
YORK COUNTY3714500
8,1291,3844,05610

Discussion

Of particular concern is that we can see that there has been a significant order of magnitude (10 x) drop in the number of reported non-citizen removals in the MUS data starting in the MUS covering May 2026. This coincides with the recent aforementioned opinion letter from AG Jones to the Department of Elections that advised ELECT to NOT remove self-identified non-citizens from the rolls. The previous AG (Miyares) made the case that the fact that all of these removals were initiated by individual actions of self-identification via interactions with DMV or the Courts, etc., made the program appropriately “individualized” in accordance with NVRA. The courts had tentatively sided with Miyares argument and ultimately denied the injunction requested by the DOJ, LWV and fellow litigants. However, the case was withdrawn shortly after the election of AG Jones. AG Jones has now taken the opposite stance of Miyares, and is now effectively granting the relief that the DOJ & LWV were requesting in their suit even though the supreme court did not grant the injunction. Because of this new direction to not remove self identified non-citizens, this explains the order of magnitude decrease in the number of non-citizen removals that we observe in the MUS data.

It is important to note that the records identified in the MUS are only those resulting from individuals who were removed from the voter rolls by ELECT after self-identifying as a non-citizen via interactions with DMV, ELECT, or other official avenues, and that the data presented here specifically excludes those individuals that were subsequently reinstated onto the voter rolls.

The fact that a small number of these identified non-citizen registrations are also associated with (presumably … if the data from ELECT is accurate) illegally cast ballots in previous elections does raise a number of questions that citizens should be (politely) asking and discussing with their legislators, elected and appointed government officials. Each act of non-citizen voting is a de-facto disenfranchisement of legal voters rights, and is a punishable offense under VA law.

Additionally, this evidence which is derived from only official state records, directly contradicts multiple news media reports and attestations that non-citizen voting is a “Myth”, and that non-citizen voting happens “almost never”. If the data from ELECT is accurate, then there are at least 4,056 ballots that have been cast by non-citizen voters just since 2019. Now, that is still very infrequent, but it is not “almost never.” It is a legitimate concern … and these discoveries are only the registrations that have been found and removed from the voter roles by ELECT and that we can observe in the data.

It should also be reiterated that these are only the records that we can observe given our data repository, and how often we can realistically purchase and acquire voter history and voter registration information. It is therefore likely that this represents a significant undercount of the occurrences of non-citizen voters and non-citizen voting.

Due to the infrequent nature of these data purchases, it is very likely that some individuals have had their voter history or voter registration information completely removed from the record in between our purchases. Additionally, we know that the MUS data does not entirely encompass all transactions performed on the RVL by the department of elections, so there may be yet other unknown transactions that we are missing.

We do not know how many exist that we do not know about, and with the recent change in guidance from the new AG Jones to ELECT we expect that our ability to observe and report on these issues into the future will be significantly impacted, as ELECT will stop removals of many of these records, and therefore they will not show up in the MUS records, even though they have been correctly flagged via self-identification.

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2026 VA June Dem Primary Election DAL File Metrics

Below you will find the current summary data and graphics from the 2026 VA June Dem Primary 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:
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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:
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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:
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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. Please note that you need to give the page time to load before trying to drill down into any of the listed subdirectories, and mobile browsers have shown some issues.

A direct link to a zip file with ALL of the metrics data stratified by Locality, etc is 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
  • “MILITARY_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where APP_STATUS==”Approved”, VOTER_TYPE= “MILITARY” and where BALLOT_STATUS==”ISSUED”
  • “OVERSEAS_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where APP_STATUS==”Approved”, VOTER_TYPE= “OVERSEAS” and where BALLOT_STATUS==”ISSUED”
  • “TEMPORARY_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where APP_STATUS==”Approved”, VOTER_TYPE= “TEMPORARY” and where BALLOT_STATUS==”ISSUED”
  • “COUNTABLE_HIGH_PROP_NG” := Number of DAL file records where COUNTABLE is True and the registrant has voted in 75% or more of the November General elections on record. (i.e. They have a high November General propensity score)
  • “COUNTABLE_MED_PROP_NG” := Number of DAL file records where COUNTABLE is True and the registrant has voted in < 75% and > 0% of the November General elections on record.
  • “COUNTABLE_ZERO_PROP_NG” := Number of DAL file records where COUNTABLE is True and the registrant has never voted in any of the November General elections on record.

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.

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2026 VA June Rep Primary Election DAL File Metrics

Below you will find the current summary data and graphics from the 2026 VA June Rep Primary 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:
Print  CSV  Excel  Copy  Download  

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:
Print  Copy  Download  

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:
Print  CSV  Copy  

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. Please note that you need to give the page time to load before trying to drill down into any of the listed subdirectories, and mobile browsers have shown some issues.

A direct link to a zip file with ALL of the metrics data stratified by Locality, etc is 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
  • “MILITARY_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where APP_STATUS==”Approved”, VOTER_TYPE= “MILITARY” and where BALLOT_STATUS==”ISSUED”
  • “OVERSEAS_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where APP_STATUS==”Approved”, VOTER_TYPE= “OVERSEAS” and where BALLOT_STATUS==”ISSUED”
  • “TEMPORARY_ISSUED” := Number of DAL file records where APP_STATUS==”Approved”, VOTER_TYPE= “TEMPORARY” and where BALLOT_STATUS==”ISSUED”
  • “COUNTABLE_HIGH_PROP_NG” := Number of DAL file records where COUNTABLE is True and the registrant has voted in 75% or more of the November General elections on record. (i.e. They have a high November General propensity score)
  • “COUNTABLE_MED_PROP_NG” := Number of DAL file records where COUNTABLE is True and the registrant has voted in < 75% and > 0% of the November General elections on record.
  • “COUNTABLE_ZERO_PROP_NG” := Number of DAL file records where COUNTABLE is True and the registrant has never voted in any of the November General elections on record.

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.

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Non-citizen registrations with previous voting history in VA election data – update Jun 2026

We have updated our previous analysis (see March 2024, July 2024, Sept 2024, Oct 2024, Nov 2024, Dec 2024, March 2025, August 2025, and Jan 2026 posts) with the latest information from the VA Department of Elections data.

Correction as of 2026-09-10: As I was doing the Sept version of this analysis I realized that the June analysis had accidentally included those records that got reinstated. This was a human error on my part as I grabbed the wrong output directory to generate the blog post. The correct numbers for the June analysis are 8,121 removed and never reinstated, 1,385 of those had a voting record, corresponding to 4,044 votes cast, with 10 identified additional voters and votes from the DAL record. I have updated all of the number below to reflect the correct number with the original (erroneous) numbers in strikethrough script.

Abstract:

Using data provided by the VA Department of Elections (“ELECT”), we have identified at least 8,126 (8,566) unique registrations that were self-identified as “Declared NonCitizen” and removed from the voter rolls since May of 2023.

Of those 8,121 (8,566) removals of self-declared noncitizens — which Virginia’s constitution prohibits from registering and voting, we see 1,385 (1,756) registrations with a corresponding record of ballots cast, according to the statewide Voter History List (VHL) record.

That brings the number of ballots cast by declared noncitizens to 4,044 (6,111), according to official records. Those are the records we know about.

In addition, the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data of Virginia’s 45-day early voting period shows an additional ten (10) noncitizen registrations and ballots — none of which are found in the Voter History List (VHL), the final tally of who voted.

Therefore, we see 4,054 (6,121) illegal ballots cast by self-identified noncitizens, from 1,395 (1,766) registrants who were removed from the voting rolls after self-declaring themselves as ineligible noncitizens. That’s according to the official Voter History List (VHL) and early voting data found in the Daily Absentee List (DAL) reports.

Voting as an ineligible individual is a Class 6 felony voting violation in Virginia.

Background on non-removal policy

After our initial post on this topic in March 2024, we submitted all of the relevant information for investigation to then-Attorney General, Jayson Miyares (R).

We did not hear back, nor did we receive any response or update on the matter. We are not aware of any action by the AG’s office on these apparent violations since 2024.

At the time in 2024, the Arlington County Electoral Board undertook its own investigation and voted 3-0 to send the information to the AG’s office as well. Fairfax County’s Electoral Board also issued a new policy on referring noncitizens with voting records to the Commonwealth Attorney. The policy stated:

“The General Registrar shall refer all individuals who were removed from the voter rolls pursuant to Va. Code § 24.2-427(C), after being identified by ELECT as noncitizens, to the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the Attorney General to determine if they have violated Virginia elections law.”

In October 2024, during early voting for the presidential election, the League of Women Voters along with the Biden Department of Justice sued VA, asking for an injunction to place approximately 1,600 removed noncitizen registrations back on the voter rolls. After two lower courts granted the injunction, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the case, and the noncitizen removals proceeded as the litigation played out.

It is EPEC’s opinion that the Commonwealth of VA was correctly applying the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in this matter under the Youngkin administration and AG Miyares, as I detailed in an X.com post on Oct 12.

In 2025, the incoming Trump DOJ dropped the Biden DOJ’s lawsuit against VA; the League of Women Voters continued the litigation.

In April of 2026, Virginia’s Democrat Attorney General Jay Jones issued an advisory opinion to the Department of Elections that effectively adopts the same position of the challengers in the Biden DOJ / LWV lawsuit.

ELECT followed this advisory opinion with guidance to registrars instructing them not to remove any noncitizen voters within the NVRA’s 90-day “quiet period” around any federal election, including primaries.

As of May 6th 2026, ELECT is no longer populating noncitizen data into “hoppers” that are used to notify Commonwealth registrars of tasks that require their action.

Instead, ELECT has instructed registrars to change the categorization of existing flagged items in the hopper from “notify voter” to “needs research.”

Fairfax County’s Board of Elections has also apparently moved off its referral policy regarding noncitizens with voting records (as reported in its February 2026 Electoral Board meeting).

See Jones’ April 16, 2026 letter to VA Commissioner of Elections Steven Koski here.

We believe this interpretation is impacting the number of self-identified noncitizens that are removed and reflected in the Monthly Update Service (MUS). We have already seen an order of magnitude difference in the data since June 1, 2026, which covers the May time-period in the new policy.

Voter-List Maintenance Obligations:

As part of its responsibilities under law, the VA Department of Elections is required to identify and remove invalid or out-of-date registration records from the voter rolls.

One situation for removal is when a registrant has been determined (via self identification) to be a noncitizen. The VA Constitution prohibits noncitizens from voting in VA elections.

“In elections by the people, the qualifications of voters shall be as follows: Each voter shall be a citizen of the United States, shall be eighteen years of age, shall fulfill the residence requirements set forth in this section, and shall be registered to vote pursuant to this article. …” VA Constitution, Article II, Section 1. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article2/section1/

Additionally, according to VA Code Section 24.2-1004, the act of knowingly casting a ballot by someone who is not eligible to vote is a Class 6 felony.

EPEC’s Analysis Methodology:

ELECT makes available for purchase by qualifying parties various data sets, including the registered voter list (RVL) and the Voter History List (VHL).

Additionally, ELECT provides a Monthly Update Service (MUS) subscription that contains (almost) all of the Voter List changes and transactions for the previous period.

The MUS datasets carry an “NVRAReasonCode” field that is associated with each transaction that gives the reason for the update or change in the voter record. This is in accordance with disclosure and transparency requirements in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

One of the reason codes for records that are removed is “Declared Non-Citizen.”

EPEC has been purchasing and archiving these official records as part of our nonprofit mission to document and educate the public about elections processes, and drive voter participation.

If you are interested in supporting this work, please head on over to our donation page, or to our give-send-go campaign to make a tax-deductible donation.

EPEC looked at the number of records associated with unique voter identification numbers identified for removal from the voter record due to non-citizenship status, per entries in the monthly updates (MUS).

We correlated those results with our accumulated Voter History List (VHL) information to determine whether noncitizen registrations had corresponding records of ballots cast in previous elections.

We only considered those records that are currently in a non-active state as of the latest MUS transaction log. Some determinations of non-citizenship status in the historical MUS transaction log might have been due to error and subsequently corrected and reinstated to active status.

Important to note: We are not considering those records that had a “Declared Non-Citizen” disqualification, but were subsequently reinstated and reactivated by ELECT.

Other Gaps to Note:

While EPEC has periodically purchased full copies of the Voter History List for our archives, there is a known issue with the way ELECT handles removals from the voter record that can cause sampling issues — depending on the time the VHL file is purchased. The result: Records of some legitimately cast ballots can be missing from the VHL due to this policy.

Namely, when ELECT removes an ineligible voter from the voter list, it also removes all instances of that registration’s voter ID from its voter history information and other data files that it provides to qualified organizations. (In my opinion, that process eliminates important voting information and thus is not a good way to manage the data, but that is the way it is done).

In light of that, EPEC also used its archived versions of the Daily Absentee List (DAL) early voting files to check records of ballots cast that might otherwise be eliminated from the VHL.

Results:

There were 8,121 (8,566) unique voter records marked for removal with the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen” and not subsequently reinstated in the accumulated MUS record that EPEC began collecting in mid-2023. Of those 8,121 (8,566) there were1,385 (1,756) that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 4,054 (6,121) associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019. Figure 1 below shows the distribution of non-citizen voters in the cumulative MUS file history. The blue trace represent the total identified and CANCELED non-citizen registrations, and the yellow trace represents the number of those records that also had corresponding records (at least 1) in the accumulated voter history data.

Figure 1: Distribution if the number of identified non-citizen records and ballots in the cumulative ELECT MUS file history. The x-axis is the date that a record was marked as CANCELED for the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen”.

Note that the data contained in the MUS updates often covers more than a single month’s period. In other words, the individual MUS files are oversampled. Subsequent MUS files can therefore also have repeated entries from previous versions, as their data may overlap. Our analysis used the first unique entry for a given voter ID marked as “Declared Non-Citizen” in the cumulative MUS record, that had not been subsequently reinstated, in order to build Figure 1. This data oversampling in the MUS may help explain the relative spike in the first (May 2023) bin compared to subsequent months.

As VHL information can be incomplete depending on the time the VHL data was purchased in relation to the time that registrants were removed from voter records, EPEC also checked these non-citizen removals against the archived history of Daily Absentee List (DAL) files that EPEC has accumulated.  There were an additional ten non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data that were not contained in the Voter History data.  The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 6,121 by 1,766 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.

These identifications represent only the individuals who declared themselves as non-citizen status through official interactions with ELECT, DMV, or other agencies. Each removed registrant was then contacted by the registrar to confirm their non-citizen status prior to removal, as is the current policy. (Again … we are only considering those records that we’re flagged as “Declared Non-Citizen”, removed and never reinstated.)

The distribution of identified unique voter ID’s for the1,385 (1,756) identified non-citizen voters per VA locality is given below in Table 1. It should be noted that each ballot record has a specific locality associated with it stating where the ballot was cast, whereas unique individuals might move between localities over time. The assignment of unique identified individuals to each locality in table 1 is therefore based on the locality listed in the specific MUS “Declared Non-Citizen” record for that individual, while the assignment of ballot cast to Localities is based on the individual VHL/DAL records. A person could have lived and voted multiple times in one county, then moved to another county and voted again before finally being determined as a non-citizen. The same person would have generated multiple VHL/DAL records for each ballot cast, and associated with potentially different localities. This should be kept in mind when attempting to interpret Table 1.

LOCALITY_NAMEREMOVEDVOTED_VHLVOTES_VHLVOTED_DAL_NOT_IN_VHL
ACCOMACK COUNTY20170
ALBEMARLE COUNTY81 9419 3173 1620
ALEXANDRIA CITY284 30933 5866 2040
ALLEGHANY COUNTY0000
AMELIA COUNTY5290
AMHERST COUNTY1000
APPOMATTOX COUNTY3000
ARLINGTON COUNTY247 26440 5584 1850
AUGUSTA COUNTY39 429 1219 370
BATH COUNTY2 30 10 10
BEDFORD COUNTY20 314 1410 600
BLAND COUNTY1130
BOTETOURT COUNTY5 60 10 40
BRISTOL CITY3170
BRUNSWICK COUNTY3 42 36 150
BUCHANAN COUNTY0000
BUCKINGHAM COUNTY5 60 10 130
BUENA VISTA CITY0000
CAMPBELL COUNTY2 30 10 100
CAROLINE COUNTY15 182 46 150
CARROLL COUNTY17 185 616 260
CHARLES CITY COUNTY7 83 414 260
CHARLOTTE COUNTY2 30 10 20
CHARLOTTESVILLE CITY47 5112 1640 510
CHESAPEAKE CITY174 19251 67157 2670
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY483 50159 74190 2760
CLARKE COUNTY13 164 76 190
COLONIAL HEIGHTS CITY23 252 44 100
COVINGTON CITY4010
CRAIG COUNTY3230
CULPEPER COUNTY48 517 922 320
CUMBERLAND COUNTY1000
DANVILLE CITY435130
DICKENSON COUNTY3110
DINWIDDIE COUNTY186250
EMPORIA CITY5000
ESSEX COUNTY8240
FAIRFAX CITY329260
FAIRFAX COUNTY1404 1428248 271604 7372
FALLS CHURCH CITY8250
FAUQUIER COUNTY41 455 911 160
FLOYD COUNTY0000
FLUVANNA COUNTY5 62 310 120
FRANKLIN CITY1 20 10 20
FRANKLIN COUNTY11 135 716 360
FREDERICK COUNTY37 454 810 240
FREDERICKSBURG CITY47 483 410 120
GALAX CITY5000
GILES COUNTY3000
GLOUCESTER COUNTY9361
GOOCHLAND COUNTY9 100 10 30
GRAYSON COUNTY4 61 21 121
GREENE COUNTY16390
GREENSVILLE COUNTY1000
HALIFAX COUNTY10120
HAMPTON CITY134 14732 4589 1760
HANOVER COUNTY33 354 614 230
HARRISONBURG CITY157 1619 1318 270
HENRICO COUNTY338 38118 4080 1780
HENRY COUNTY1020
HIGHLAND COUNTY0000
HOPEWELL CITY1000
ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY4 51 212 210
JAMES CITY COUNTY62 6510 1333 460
KING AND QUEEN COUNTY3270
KING GEORGE COUNTY10140
KING WILLIAM COUNTY3 51 312 370
LANCASTER COUNTY3 4210
LEE COUNTY0000
LEXINGTON CITY1130
LOUDOUN COUNTY464 484109 127280 4140
LOUISA COUNTY15 193 719 360
LUNENBURG COUNTY2000
LYNCHBURG CITY47 538 1322 510
MADISON COUNTY1 20 1050
MANASSAS CITY104 11011 1533 430
MANASSAS PARK CITY46 513 69 220
MARTINSVILLE CITY17 184 53 50
MATHEWS COUNTY0000
MECKLENBURG COUNTY15 167 818 190
MIDDLESEX COUNTY3110
MONTGOMERY COUNTY315211
NELSON COUNTY4 71 410 200
NEW KENT COUNTY11 146 922 360
NEWPORT NEWS CITY228 23350 55167 2190
NORFOLK CITY225 24738 55144 2200
NORTHAMPTON COUNTY6 71 24 70
NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY3 42 37 110
NORTON CITY1000
NOTTOWAY COUNTY9 121 46 310
ORANGE COUNTY9 125 713 150
PAGE COUNTY0000
PATRICK COUNTY5120
PETERSBURG CITY52 598 1527 680
PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY19 256 1125 520
POQUOSON CITY1000
PORTSMOUTH CITY114 12140 4696 1320
POWHATAN COUNTY5 6180
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY143110
PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY32 343 55 90
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY903 915142 152401 4481
PULASKI COUNTY14470
RADFORD CITY1030
RAPPAHANNOCK COUNTY3000
RICHMOND CITY336 34556 65186 2411
RICHMOND COUNTY1 20 10 40
ROANOKE CITY182 19312 2230 680
ROANOKE COUNTY34450
ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY0010
ROCKINGHAM COUNTY76 7816 1645 480
RUSSELL COUNTY9390
SALEM CITY11 152 41 170
SCOTT COUNTY64170
SHENANDOAH COUNTY38 422 68 180
SMYTH COUNTY10 114 519 210
SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY0 00 00 30
SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY133 1375 712 180
STAFFORD COUNTY225 24232 4571 1332
STAUNTON CITY7 90 20 110
SUFFOLK CITY77 8529 37102 1691
SURRY COUNTY2000
SUSSEX COUNTY2130
TAZEWELL COUNTY7 91 31 130
VIRGINIA BEACH CITY373 38078 82308 3480
WARREN COUNTY28 304 612 240
WASHINGTON COUNTY15 214 610 220
WAYNESBORO CITY3 30 02 40
WESTMORELAND COUNTY7 80 10 60
WILLIAMSBURG CITY18 184 46 70
WINCHESTER CITY45560
WISE COUNTY3 62 53 130
WYTHE COUNTY3000
YORK COUNTY37 3814 1550 510

85661756611110

Discussion

Of particular concern is that we can see that there has been a significant order of magnitude (10 x) drop in the number of reported non-citizen removals in the MUS data starting in the MUS covering May 2026. This coincides with the recent aforementioned opinion letter from AG Jones to the Department of Elections that advised ELECT to NOT remove self-identified non-citizens from the rolls. The previous AG (Miyares) made the case that the fact that all of these removals were initiated by individual actions of self-identification via interactions with DMV or the Courts, etc., made the program appropriately “individualized” in accordance with NVRA. The courts had tentatively sided with Miyares argument and ultimately denied the injunction requested by the DOJ, LWV and fellow litigants. However, the case was withdrawn shortly after the election of AG Jones. AG Jones has now taken the opposite stance of Miyares, and is now effectively granting the relief that the DOJ & LWV were requesting in their suit even though the supreme court did not grant the injunction. Because of this new direction to not remove self identified non-citizens, this explains the order of magnitude decrease in the number of non-citizen removals that we observe in the MUS data.

It is important to note that the records identified in the MUS are only those resulting from individuals who were removed from the voter rolls by ELECT after self-identifying as a non-citizen via interactions with DMV, ELECT, or other official avenues, and that the data presented here specifically excludes those individuals that were subsequently reinstated onto the voter rolls.

The fact that a small number of these identified non-citizen registrations are also associated with (presumably … if the data from ELECT is accurate) illegally cast ballots in previous elections does raise a number of questions that citizens should be (politely) asking and discussing with their legislators, elected and appointed government officials. Each act of non-citizen voting is a de-facto disenfranchisement of legal voters rights, and is a punishable offense under VA law.

Additionally, this evidence which is derived from only official state records, directly contradicts multiple news media reports and attestations that non-citizen voting is a “Myth”, and that non-citizen voting happens “almost never”. If the data from ELECT is accurate, then there are at least 4,054 (6,121) ballots that have been cast by non-citizen voters just since 2019. Now, that is still very infrequent, but it is not “almost never.” It is a legitimate concern … and these discoveries are only the registrations that have been found and removed from the voter roles by ELECT and that we can observe in the data.

It should also be reiterated that these are only the records that we can observe given our data repository, and how often we can realistically purchase and acquire voter history and voter registration information. It is therefore likely that this represents a significant undercount of the occurrences of non-citizen voters and non-citizen voting.

Due to the infrequent nature of these data purchases, it is very likely that some individuals have had their voter history or voter registration information completely removed from the record in between our purchases. Additionally, we know that the MUS data does not entirely encompass all transactions performed on the RVL by the department of elections, so there may be yet other unknown transactions that we are missing.

We do not know how many exist that we do not know about, and with the recent change in guidance from the new AG Jones to ELECT we expect that our ability to observe and report on these issues into the future will be significantly impacted, as ELECT will stop removals of many of these records, and therefore they will not show up in the MUS records, even though they have been correctly flagged via self-identification.

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VA 2024 Machine Tape Review – Prince William County

Over the last few weeks I’ve spent the time to go through all of the tabulator machine tapes for Prince William County VA, which are made available by the PWC Registrar and scans of which are posted on the pwcvotes.org website. Our sincere thanks to the PWC Registrar for posting these for public inspection, and we encourage other Registrars to do the same or similar.

The excel file with all of the machine tape results entered, as well as corresponding tabs with the corresponding parsed results from the Dept of Elections JSON and CSV result reports is available below. The first tab of the linked excel file lists all of the machine tapes and notes where discrepancies exist.

VA 2024 November General – Prince William County – Machine TapesDownload

Thankfully, there were only a few very small discrepancies noted between the machine tape reports and the results reported by the Virginia department of elections. The maximum discrepancy of 18 ballots was associated with the proposed constitutional amendment contest, and can be attributed to two individuals utilizing the federal only ballot, which I confirmed with via phone conversation with the PWC registrar.

This discrepancy can most clearly be seen in the Burke-Nickens machine tape shown below, where the sum total number of votes in the Constitutional amendment section does not equal the total number of ballots recorded by the tabulator. (This is highlighted in orange in the linked excel file.)

Figure 1: Issue with PWC 112 Burke_Nickens S1500036303 Tabulator Machine shows two ballots missing from the Constitutional Amendment section.

Note that the second line from the bottom shows that the number of “Pcts/Splits Total” is equal to 2. This means that there were two different ballot styles utilized with this tabulator. Two of those ballots were federal only, so they did not have the section for voting on the VA Constitutional amendment. So while the total ballot counter at the top of the tape reads 475, the total number of ballots cast for the constitutional amendment was 473.

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Non-citizen registrations with previous voting history in VA election data – update Oct 2024

We have updated our previous analysis (from March, July, and Sept) with the latest information from the VA Department of Elections data.

Abstract:

Using the data provided by the VA Department of Elections (ELECT), we have identified at least 3,533 unique registrations that were identified as “Declared Non-Citizen” and removed by ELECT from the voter rolls since May of 2023. In the last update period, there was a significant(!) increase of almost 50% of the TOTAL number of non-citizen removals that we’ve seen in our previous reporting (see data below). This increase does not appear to be an artifact of our processing routines, as all of the processing code has remained the same since our last update. We should also note for the record that these are only self-declared removals, and it does not appear from the data available that there was any changes to the standard process used by ELECT.

Of those 3,533 removals there were 537 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 1,296 associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019. There were an additional 2 non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data, that were not contained in the Voter History data.  The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 1,298 by 539 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.

After our March 2024 post on this topic, we submitted all of the relevant information that we had at the time to the VA AG’s office. We have not heard any response or update on the matter since that time, besides this being considered an active investigation. We subsequently sent our July results as well to the same contact at the AG’s office, but have had no response.

The Arlington County VA Electoral Board undertook their own investigation into this matter after our previous results were posted, and they recently (as of Sept 10 2024) voted 3-0 to send the information to the AG’s office as well. The Arlington County Commonwealths Attorney also is reported to have an ongoing investigation into the matter. Similar efforts are underway in multiple other counties, including Loudoun and Fairfax counties, to name a few.

https://www.gazetteleader.com/arlington/news/investigation-launched-have-non-citizens-voted-in-arlington-9379534

https://www.gazetteleader.com/arlington/news/va-attorney-general-to-be-alerted-on-possible-non-citizen-voting-9504753

Background:

The VA Department of Elections continuously tries to identify and remove invalid or out of date registration records from the voter rolls. One category used for removal is if a registrant has been determined to be a non-citizen. It is required by the VA Constitution that only citizens are allowed to vote in VA elections.

In elections by the people, the qualifications of voters shall be as follows: Each voter shall be a citizen of the United States, shall be eighteen years of age, shall fulfill the residence requirements set forth in this section, and shall be registered to vote pursuant to this article. …

VA Constitution, Article II, Section 1. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article2/section1/

Additionally, according to VA Code Section 24.2-1004, the act of knowingly casting a ballot by someone who is not eligible to vote is a Class 6 felony.

A. Any person who wrongfully deposits a ballot in the ballot container or casts a vote on any voting equipment, is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

B. Any person who intentionally (i) votes more than once in the same election, whether those votes are cast in Virginia or in Virginia and any other state or territory of the United States, (ii) procures, assists, or induces another to vote more than once in the same election, whether those votes are cast in Virginia or in Virginia and any other state or territory of the United States, (iii) votes knowing that he is not qualified to vote where and when the vote is to be given, or (iv) procures, assists, or induces another to vote knowing that such person is not qualified to vote where and when the vote is to be given is guilty of a Class 6 felony.

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title24.2/chapter10/section24.2-1004/

ELECT makes available for purchase by qualifying parties various different data sets, including the registered voter list (RVL) and the voter history list information file (VHL). Additionally, ELECT makes available a Monthly Update Service (MUS) subscription that is published at the beginning of each month and contains (almost) all of the Voter List changes and transactions for the previous period.

In the MUS data there is a “NVRAReasonCode” field that is associated with each transaction that gives the reason for the update or change in the voter record. This is in accordance with the disclosure and transparency requirements in the NVRA. One of the possible reason codes given for records that are removed is “Declared Non-Citizen.”

EPEC has been consistently purchasing and archiving all of these official records as part of our ongoing work to document and educate the public as to the ongoing operations of our elections. (If your interested in supporting this work, please head on over to our donation page, or to our give-send-go campaign to make a tax-deductible donation, as these data purchases are not cheap!)

EPEC looked at the number of records associated with unique voter identification numbers that had been identified for removal from the voter record due to non-citizenship status, per the entries in the MUS, and correlated those results with our accumulated voter history list information in order to determine how many non-citizen registrations had corresponding records of ballots cast in previous elections. We only considered those records that are currently in a non-active state as of the latest MUS transaction log, as some determinations of non-citizenship status in the historical MUS transaction log might have been due to error and subsequently corrected and reinstated to active status. That is, we are not considering those records that had a “Declared Non-Citizen” disqualification, but were then subsequently reinstated and reactivated by ELECT.

While EPEC has periodically purchased full copies of the Voter History List for our archive, there is a known issue with the way ELECT handles removals from the voter record that can cause sampling issues depending on the time the VHL file is purchased, and records of legitimately cast ballots to not be present in the VHL: Namely, when ELECT removes a voter from the voter list, they also remove all instances of that voter ID from voter history information and other data files provided to qualified organizations. (IMO … thats a terrible way to manage the data, but that is the way it is done.) In light of that, EPEC also used its archived versions of the Daily Absentee List (DAL) for recent elections in order to attempt to find records of votes cast that might otherwise be missing from the VHL.

Results:

There were 3,533 unique voter records marked for removal with the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen” and not subsequently reinstated in the accumulated MUS record that EPEC began collecting in mid-2023. Of those 3,533 there were 537 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 1,296 associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019. Figure 1 shows the distribution of non-citizen voters in the cumulative MUS file history. The blue trace represent the total identified and CANCELED non-citizen registrations, and the yellow trace represents the number of those records that also had corresponding records in the accumulated voter history data.

Figure 1: Distribution if the number of identified non-citizen records and ballots in the cumulative ELECT MUS file history. The x-axis is the date that a record was marked as CANCELED for the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen”.

Note that the data contained in the MUS updates often covers more than a single month period. In other words, the individual MUS files are oversampled. Subsequent MUS files can therefore also have repeated entries from previous versions, as their data may overlap. Our analysis used the first unique entry for a given voter ID marked as “Declared Non-Citizen” in the cumulative MUS record in order to build Figure 1. This data oversampling in the MUS helps explain the relative increase in the May 2023 bin.

As VHL information can be incomplete depending on the time the VHL data was purchased in relation to the time that registrants were removed from voter records, EPEC also checked these non-citizen removals against the archived history of Daily Absentee List (DAL) files that EPEC has accumulated.  There were an additional 2 non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data, that were not contained in the Voter History data.  The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 1,298 by 539 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.

These identifications represent only the individuals who declared themselves as non-citizen status through official interactions with ELECT, DMV, or other agencies. Each removed registrant was then contacted by the registrar to confirm their non-citizen status.

The distribution of identified unique voter ID’s for the 537 identified non-citizen voters per VA locality is given below in Table 1. It should be noted that each ballot record has a specific locality associated with where the ballot was cast, whereas unique individuals might move between localities over time. The assignment of unique identified individuals to each locality in table 1 is therefore based on the locality listed in the specific MUS “Declared Non-Citizen” record for that individual, while the assignment of ballot cast to Localities is based on the individual VHL/DAL records. A person could have lived and voted multiple times in one county, then moved to another county and voted again before finally being determined as a non-citizen. The same person would have generated multiple VHL/DAL records for each ballot cast, and associated with potentially different localities. This should be kept in mind when attempting to interpret Table 1.


MUS RemovalsVoted (VHL)Voted (DAL)Votes (VHL)Votes (DAL)
ACCOMACK COUNTY7



ALBEMARLE COUNTY335
8
ALEXANDRIA CITY15924
41
AMELIA COUNTY21
3
APPOMATTOX COUNTY1



ARLINGTON COUNTY11218
49
AUGUSTA COUNTY131
1
BEDFORD COUNTY92
4
BOTETOURT COUNTY2



BRISTOL CITY1



BRUNSWICK COUNTY21
2
BUCKINGHAM COUNTY3



CAROLINE COUNTY82
4
CARROLL COUNTY72
5
CHARLES CITY COUNTY21
3
CHARLOTTESVILLE CITY242
7
CHESAPEAKE CITY9222
56
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY22724
57
CLARKE COUNTY83
4
COLONIAL HEIGHTS CITY121
3
COVINGTON CITY1



CRAIG COUNTY1



CULPEPER COUNTY252
2
DANVILLE CITY172
8
DINWIDDIE COUNTY91
1
EMPORIA CITY2



ESSEX COUNTY31
3
FAIRFAX CITY93
11
FAIRFAX COUNTY6419812131
FAUQUIER COUNTY233
10
FLUVANNA COUNTY21
1
FRANKLIN COUNTY32
4
FREDERICK COUNTY282
2
FREDERICKSBURG CITY232
4
GALAX CITY2



GILES COUNTY2



GLOUCESTER COUNTY21
1
GOOCHLAND COUNTY5

1
GRAYSON COUNTY1



GREENE COUNTY61
2
HALIFAX COUNTY1



HAMPTON CITY5813
17
HANOVER COUNTY131
2
HARRISONBURG CITY692
3
HENRICO COUNTY1019
45
HENRY COUNTY


2
ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY1

2
JAMES CITY COUNTY314
13
KING GEORGE COUNTY4



KING WILLIAM COUNTY1



LOUDOUN COUNTY22247
110
LOUISA COUNTY9



LYNCHBURG CITY224
11
MANASSAS CITY504
11
MANASSAS PARK CITY17

2
MARTINSVILLE CITY61


MECKLENBURG COUNTY73
10
MIDDLESEX COUNTY2



MONTGOMERY COUNTY


3
NELSON COUNTY2



NEW KENT COUNTY31


NEWPORT NEWS CITY10322
49
NORFOLK CITY8913
33
NORTHAMPTON COUNTY1



NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY32
5
NORTON CITY1



NOTTOWAY COUNTY4



ORANGE COUNTY31
3
PATRICK COUNTY1



PETERSBURG CITY253
5
PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY72
4
PORTSMOUTH CITY3813
37
POWHATAN COUNTY4

1
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY103
11
PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY121
1
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY39860
136
PULASKI COUNTY61
2
RAPPAHANNOCK COUNTY2



RICHMOND CITY161241671
ROANOKE CITY452
3
ROANOKE COUNTY192


ROCKINGHAM COUNTY225
13
RUSSELL COUNTY31
1
SALEM CITY3



SCOTT COUNTY11
4
SHENANDOAH COUNTY171
1
SMYTH COUNTY2



SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY614
10
STAFFORD COUNTY7510
28
STAUNTON CITY5



SUFFOLK CITY2811
20
SURRY COUNTY1



SUSSEX COUNTY21
3
TAZEWELL COUNTY41
1
VIRGINIA BEACH CITY14919
66
WARREN COUNTY142
5
WASHINGTON COUNTY52
6
WAYNESBORO CITY3



WESTMORELAND COUNTY1



WILLIAMSBURG CITY101


WINCHESTER CITY222
2
WISE COUNTY1



WYTHE COUNTY3



YORK COUNTY2110
38
Totals3533537212962

The distribution of the 1,296 ballots that were identified as being cast by non-citizen voters (the yellow trace in Figure 1) in previous elections is shown in Figure 2. The most significant spikes are in the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 November General elections, as well as the 2020 March Democratic presidential primary. Figure 3, which shows this distribution as a percentage of votes cast. Please note the scale of the Y-axis on the percent plot in Figure 3 is in percent of total ballots cast in each election. These graphs were only produced for the VHL data, and do not include the DAL identified records.

Figure 2: Distribution of identified non-citizen ballots cast in previous elections.
Figure 3: Distribution of identified non-citizen ballots cast in previous elections as percent of total ballots cast, according to entries in the VHL/DAL data files.

Figures 4 and 5 show the distribution of the registration dates of the identified non-citizen records. The same data is plotted in figure 4 and 5, with the only difference being the scale of the Y-axis in order to better observe the dynamic range of the values. When we look at the registration date of these identified records, we see that there is a distinct relative increase starting around 1996, and then again around 2012.

Figure 4: Registration dates of the identified non-citizen records. Absolute count on y-axis.
Figure 5: Registration dates of the identified non-citizen records. Logarithmic Y-axis scale.

EPEC made a FOIA request to the VA Attorney General’s office on March 11, 2024 inquiring for any records regarding how many prosecutions for non-citizen voting had occurred since June of 2023. We received a response that the AG had no such relevant records.

EPEC subsequently submitted our March analysis dataset to the VA AG’s office upon their request. We have heard no updates or status as to any action taken by the AG’s office since that time, except that it is being considered an ongoing investigation.

Discussion

It appears from the MUS data, that the VA Department of Elections (ELECT) is doing routine identification, cleanup and removal of non-citizen registrations, which is a good thing and we commend them for their continued efforts to maintain clean voter registration lists.

However, the fact that a small number of these identified non-citizen registrations are also associated with (presumably … if the data from ELECT is accurate) illegally cast ballots in previous elections does raise a number of questions that citizens should be (politely) asking and discussing with their legislators, elected and appointed government officials. Each act of non-citizen voting is a de-facto disenfranchisement of legal voters rights, and is a punishable offense under VA law.

Q: How did these registrants get placed onto the voter rolls in the first place?

Q: What method and/or data sources are used by the state to identify non-citizen registrations for removal? If that process is exhaustive, and covers all registrations, then these numbers might be considered to represent a statistical complete picture of the problem. If that process is not exhaustive, in that it only uses serendipitous corroborating data sources, then these results likely under-represent the scale of the issues.

Q: As noted above, we are only considering here those individuals who have not had their records re-instated or reactivated after a determination of non-citizen status. We do not have enough information to determine how or why some records were first determined to be non-citizen, canceled and then subsequently re-instated. One potential area of concern is determining whether or not registrants might be falsely or errantly claiming to not be a citizen on official documents in order to be excused from jury duty, for example, and then work to re-instate their voting status once those documents percolate through the system to ELECT and are flagged for removal. This is a wholly separate but serious issue, as making false claims on official documents is itself a punishable offense.

Q: What procedures, processes and technical solutions are in place to prevent current or future registration and casting of ballots by non-citizens? This is especially pertinent given the current state of the flow of illegal immigrants crossing our national borders. According to a recent report by Yahoo Finance, VA is one of the top 30 destinations for illegal migrants, with both Loudoun County and Fairfax making the list.

Q: Why have none of the identified non-citizens who also cast ballots been investigated or prosecuted under VA Code 24.2-1004? As the identification of these ballots comes directly from looking at the official records produced by ELECT, it seems prudent for these to be forwarded by ELECT to the AG’s office with a recommendation to investigate and prosecute. Yet our FOIA request to the VA AG’s office inquiring as to any records associated with these types of investigations or prosecutions produced a “no relevant records exist” response. And since we submitted this information to the AG’s office, there has been no follow up.

Additionally, this evidence which is derived from only official state records, directly contradicts multiple news media reports and attestations that non-citizen voting is a “Myth”, and that non-citizen voting happens “almost never”. If the data from ELECT is accurate, then there are at least 1,298 ballots that have been cast by non-citizen voters just since 2019. Now, that is still very infrequent, but it is not “almost never.” It is a legitimate concern … and these discoveries are only the registrations that have been found and removed from the voter roles by ELECT and that we can observe in the data. We do not know how many exist that we do not know about.

It should be reiterated that these are only the records that we can observe given our data repository, and how often we can realistically purchase and acquire voter history and voter registration information. It is therefore likely that this represents a significant undercount of the occurrences of non-citizen voters and non-citizen voting.

It costs us (EPEC) approximately ~$5K for each purchase of the statewide voter history list, and approximately $15K/year to maintain RVL records using a single baseline full purchase + 2 purchases of the 6mo MUS subscription. Due to the infrequent nature of these data purchases, it is very likely that some individuals have had their voter history or voter registration information completely removed from the record in between our purchases. Additionally, we know that the MUS data does not entirely encompass all transactions performed on the RVL by the department of elections, so there may be yet other unknown transactions that we are missing.

For information that is supposed to be publicly available (according to federal NVRA laws), the state has put up significant hurdles in order for citizens and organizations to acquire it for use it for ensuring transparency and integrity of our electoral process. If we are to have elections that are transparent and accountable to the public, then we must insist that the data be made available and accessible.

Categories
Uncategorized

A Canary in the Data Mine

Since VA Gov Youngkin issued Executive Order 35, it has been getting quite a bit of press … I wanted to make a few comments on it after having a chance to digest it.

Overall, I think it’s a net positive for Election Integrity efforts in VA, but not because there is any new or groundbreaking policy by the governor or his administration. Most of the items in his EO are already existing policy, and the EO language is worded such that the current actions of the Department of Elections (ELECT) can be arguably said to comply with those policies. There are a couple of small improvements, such as the fact that this EO codifies into transparent public policy the specific requirements that the commissioner must certify in writing. Even though there isn’t any drastically new policies, this does improve on overall public transparency, confidence and accountability, and I think thats a good thing.

What will be interesting in my opinion, is that now that this EO has been issued, will our team at EPEC notice any demonstrable difference in the quality of voter registration data that we track from ELECT going forward?

More specifically, I’m going to be tracking a few very specific records to see if they get addressed or not.

There are a few egregious records in the VA voter registration file that are obviously problematic that should be removed or at least updated/corrected by ELECT. I, and the team at EPEC, have been tracking these specific records for years but have not published or discussed them publicly. A few of them we even directly mentioned to the current Commissioner of Elections during our face-to-face meeting with her last year. These records should be “easy” to find and clean up by ELECT, as they are obviously errant and invalid registrations in their current state.

As of the latest data we have, those records are still in the voter list and listed as ACTIVE registrations, after nearly four years since I first found them. They can easily be identified with very simple logical checks to the registration records … descriptions of which I and the team at EPEC have discussed publicly and provided direct to ELECT and local registrars on multiple occasions.

The reason I bring this up, is that these can be considered and used as “hold out” test cases, in data science parlance. They are “canaries in the coal mine”, if you will. If we at EPEC start observing that these records are being responsibly updated or removed going forward, in accordance with the mandate in the EO to perform daily scrubbing of the voter rolls for ineligible records, then that would give VA citizens some evidence and verification that the Gov and ELECT are serious about their efforts.

That would be excellent if they did, but seeing as how I’ve been observing these records for 4 years while the administration proclaim what an excellent job its doing … I’m not going to hold my breath.

Categories
Election Data Analysis Election Forensics Election Integrity mathematics technical Uncategorized

VA 2024 March Primary Election Fingerprints

Abstract

Examining the Election Night Reporting data from the VA 2024 March Democratic and Republican primaries provides supporting evidence that the Republican primary was impacted and skewed by a large number of Democratic “crossover” voters, resulting in an irregular election fingerprint when the data is plotted.

Background

The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a paper in 2012 titled “Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities.” [1] The paper asked the question, “How can it be distinguished whether an election outcome represents the will of the people or the will of the counters?” The study reviewed the results from elections in Russia and other countries, where widespread fraud was suspected. The study was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as well as referenced in multiple election guides by USAID [2][3], among other citations.

The study authors’ thesis was that with a large sample sample of the voting data, they would be able to see whether or not voting patterns deviated from the voting patterns of elections where there was no suspected fraud. The results of their study proved that there were indeed significant deviations from the expected, normal voting patterns in the elections where fraud was suspected, as well as provided a number of interesting insights into the associated “signatures” of various electoral mechanism as they present themselves in the data.

Statistical results are often graphed, to provide a visual representation of how normal data should look. A particularly useful visual representation of election data, as utilized in [1], is a two-dimensional histogram of the percent voter turnout vs the percent vote share for the winner, or what I call an “election fingerprint”. Under the assumptions of a truly free and fair election, the expected shape of the fingerprint is of that of a 2D Gaussian (a.k.a. a “Normal”) distribution [4]. The obvious caveat here is that no election is ever perfect, but with a large enough sample size of data points we should be able to identify large scale statistical properties.

In many situations, the results of an experiment follow what is called a ‘normal distribution’. For example, if you flip a coin 100 times and count how many times it comes up heads, the average result will be 50. But if you do this test 100 times, most of the results will be close to 50, but not exactly. You’ll get almost as many cases with 49, or 51. You’ll get quite a few 45s or 55s, but almost no 20s or 80s. If you plot your 100 tests on a graph, you’ll get a well-known shape called a bell curve that’s highest in the middle and tapers off on either side. That is a normal distribution.

https://news.mit.edu/2012/explained-sigma-0209

In a free and fair election, the plotted graphs of both the Turnout percentage and the percentage of Vote Share for Election Winner should (again … ideally) both resemble Gaussian “Normal” distributions; and their combined distribution should also follow a 2-dimensional Gaussian (or “normal”) distribution. Computing this 2 Dimensional joint distribution of the % Turnout vs. % Vote Share is what I refer to as an “Election Fingerprint”.

Figure 1 is reprinted examples from the referenced National Academy of Sciences paper. The actual election results in Russia, Uganda and Switzerland appear in the left column, the right column is the modeled expected appearance in a fair election with little fraud, and the middle column is the researchers’ model of the as-collected data, with any possible fraud mechanisms included.

Figure 1: NAS Paper Results (reprinted from [1])

As you can see, the election in Switzerland (assumed fair) shows a range of voter turnout, from approximately 30 – 70% across voting districts, and a similar range of votes for the winner. The Switzerland data is consistent across models, and does not show any significant irregularities.

What do the clusters mean in the Russia 2011 and 2012 elections? Of particular concern are the top right corners, showing nearly 100% turnout of voters, and nearly 100% of them voted for the winner.

Both of those events (more than 90% of registered voters turning out to vote and more than 90% of the voters voting for the winner) are statistically improbable, even for very contested elections. Election results that show a strong linear streak away from the main fingerprint lobe indicates ‘ballot stuffing,’ where ballots are added at a specific rate. Voter turnout over 100% indicates ‘extreme fraud’. [1][5]

Note that election results with ‘outliers’ – results that fall outside of expected normal voting patterns – while evidentiary indicators, are not in and of themselves definitive proof of outright fraud or malfeasance. For example, in rare but extreme cases, where the electorate is very split and the split closely follows the geographic boundaries between voting precincts, we could see multiple overlapping Gaussian lobes in the 2D image. Even in that rare case, there should not be distinct structures visible in the election fingerprint, linear streaks, overly skewed or smeared distributions, or exceedingly high turnout or vote share percentages. Additional reviews of voting patterns and election results should be conducted whenever deviations from normal patterns occur in an election.

Additionally it should be noted that “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”: Election Fingerprints that look otherwise normal might still have underlying issues that are not readily apparent with this view of the data.

Results on 2024 VA March Primaries:

Figure 2 and Figure 3 are the computed election fingerprints for the Democratic and Republican VA 2024 March Primaries, respectively. They were computed according to the NAS paper and using official state reported voter turnout and votes for the statewide winner and reported per voting Locality with combined In-Person Early, Election Day, Absentee and Provisional votes. Figures 4 and 5 perform the same process, except each data point is generated per individual precinct in a locality. The color scale moves from precincts with low counts as deep blue, to precincts with high numbers represented as bright yellow. Note that a small blurring filter was applied to the computed image for ease of viewing small isolated Locality or Precinct results.

The upper right inset in each graphic image was computed per the NAS paper; the bottom left inset shows what an idealized model of the data could or should look like, based on the reported voter turnout and vote share for the winner. This ideal model is allowed to have up to 3 Gaussian lobes based on the peak locations and standard deviations in the reported results. The top-left and bottom-right inset plots show the sum of the rows and columns of the fingerprint image. The top-left graph corresponds to the sum of the rows in the upper right image and is the histogram of the vote share for the winner across precincts. The bottom right graph shows the sum of the columns of the upper right image, and is the histogram of the percentage turnout across voting localities.

Figure 2 Democratic primary, accumulated per Locality:
Figure 3 Republican primary, accumulated per Locality:
Figure 4 Democratic primary, accumulated per Precinct:
Figure 5 Republican primary, accumulated per Precinct:

Analysis:

As can be seen in Figure 2 and 4, the Democratic primary fingerprint looks to fall within expected normal distribution. Even though the total vote share for the winner (Biden) is up around 90%, this was not unexpected given the current set of contestants and the fact that Biden is the incumbent.

The Republican primary results, as shown in Figure 3 and 5, show significant “smearing” of the percent of total vote share for the winner. The percent of voter turnout (x-axis) does however show a near Gaussian distribution, which is what one would expect. The republican primary data does not show the linear streaking pattern that the authors in [1] correlate with extreme fraud, but significant smearing of the distribution is observed.

A consideration that might partially explain this smearing of the histogram, is that there was at least 17% of “crossover voters” who historically lean Democrat but voted in the Republican primary (see here for more information). Multiple news reports and exit polling suggest that this was due in part to loosely organized efforts by the opposing party to cast “Protest Votes” and artificially inflate the challenger (Haley) and dilute the expected (Trump) margin of victory for the winner, with no intention of supporting a Republican candidate in the General Election. (This is completely legal in VA, by the way, as VA does not require by-party voter registration.)

If we categorize each locality as being either Democratic or Republican leaning based on the average results of the last four presidential elections, and then split the computation of the per precinct results into separate parts accordingly, we can see this phenomenon much clearer.

Figure 6 shows the per-precinct results for only those locality precincts that belong to historic Republican leaning localities. It depicts a much tighter distribution and has much less smearing or blurring of the distribution tails. We can see from the data that Republican base in historically Republican leaning localities seems solidly behind candidate Trump.

Figure 7 shows the per-precinct results for only those locality precincts that belong to historic Democratic leaning localities. It can clearly be seen by comparing the two plots that the major contributor to the spread of the total republican primary distribution is the votes from historically Democratic leaning localities.

Figure 6 Republican primary, accumulated per Precinct in Republican leaning localities:
Figure 7 Republican primary, accumulated per Precinct in Democratic leaning localities:

References:

Categories
Election Data Analysis Election Integrity technical Uncategorized

Technical issues with Enhanced Voting Election Night Return JSON files

As I was going through and processing the (new) VA election night reporting data provided by Enhanced Voting, I noticed a number of technical issues with the data feed. I’ve tried to capture them here in the attempt to help assist the VA Department of Elections in correcting bugs and implementation issues with their new reporting format.

While the new ENR data feed is commendable in that it presents the data for the state in an easily obtainable JSON formatted file, the following issues were observed in my processing of the data. I am happy to provide specific examples of these issues to the Enhanced Voting development team in order to help address them.

  • Inconsistent JSON formats being returned. Sometimes locality group results information is a cell of structures, sometimes an array.
  • Occasional mal-formed JSON, missing opening or closing parentheses or brackets causing the file to not be able to be parsed by JSON importing functions in python, MATLAB, etc.
  • Occasional duplicated locality precinct group result information
Categories
Election Integrity mathematics technical Uncategorized

Ranked Choice Voting: An Example of a Perverse Social Choice Function

The below is based on the discussion of “Single Transferrable Vote” (“STV”) methods in [1], published in 1977. STV has more recently been called “Ranked Choice Voting” (RCV) or “Instant Runoff Voting” (IRF), among other names, by lobbying groups that are currently pushing for its incorporation into our voting systems. Irrespective of the name used, it represents a family of voting methods, with slightly different variants depending on how votes are removed and/or redistributed in each successive round of voting. [2][5]

What does STV/RCV/IRV entail, in general:

The core system is a proportional voting system, where voters are required to rank order their preferred candidate selections and all ballots are collected and centralized tabulation is performed in multiple rounds until winner(s), or candidates that have support above a specified quota (or “threshold”), are allocated.

A common definition of the quota utilized in STL/RCV/IRV systems is the “Droop quota”, and is defined as:

q = FLOOR( # of Voters / (# of Seats + 1) + 1)

In a given round the candidate with the least support is eliminated from further evaluation. Surplus votes from candidates that go over the droop threshold and votes from eliminated candidates can be distributed amongst remaining candidates for subsequent rounds. Surplus vote distribution is only applicable when multiple winners are allowed in a contest.

Vote allocation procedure for STV/RCV/IRV. Reprinted from [1].

The arguments used to support and push for RCV have not significantly changed since the time that the original paper was published, but the terms and language utilized have been modified. The authors note that much of the rationale in pushing for STV was centered around the ideas of inclusivity and making sure voters are able to cast “effective” ballots.

“Modem proponents emphasize the system’s effective representation of minorities, its sensitivity and accuracy in ‘measuring changes in popular will,’ and its tendency to encourage independent (nonparty line) voting.”

Doron, G., & Kronick, R. (1977) [1]

The same arguments have been recently repeated and pushed to legislators and the media. The name has changed from “Single Transferrable Vote” to “Ranked Choice Voting” or “Instant Runoff Voting”, but the argument remains largely the same, as can be seen by simply visiting the websites and promotional material for any of the current groups that are lobbying for RCV to be incorporated [3][4].

The issue pointed out by Doron & Kronick:

The authors in [1] note that the STV/RCV/IRV system allows for a “perversion” (their words, not mine) whereby a candidates chances to be selected as a winner can potentially be negatively impacted even when receiving increased support.

“… a function that permitted an increased vote for a candidate to cause a decline in that candidate’s rank in the social ordering-would probably strike most of us as a rather absurd, even perverse, method of arriving at a social choice. Consequently, some writers refer to this condition as the ‘Non-Perversity’ condition. All of the democratic social choice functions that have been considered in the literature were assumed to guarantee this condition, but the Single Transferrable Vote system does not.”

Doron, G., & Kronick, R. (1977) [1]

The authors present a hypothetical example to demonstrate the issue. Suppose we have 3 candidates (Candidate X, Candidate Y, Candidate Z) and two different voting groups, which we will refer to as group D and D’. Both D and D’ are fairly similar and only disagree on the relative ranking of two specific candidates.

In the tables below, recreated from [1], the only difference in the two voting group selections is that candidate X receives more support than candidate Y in group D’. However, if using the voting rules as described above candidate X wins in D, and loses in D’ even though X has increased support in D’.

# of VotersFirst ChoiceSecond ChoiceThird Choice
6XYZ
2YXZ
4YZX
5ZXY
Voting group D selections. Reprinted from [1].
# of VotersFirst ChoiceSecond ChoiceThird Choice
6XYZ
2XYZ
4YZX
5ZXY
Voting group D’ selections. Reprinted from [1].

There are 17 voters in each case, and only 1 seat available. Therefore, the Droop quota/threshold is 9 votes required in order to declare a winner.

In group D it is candidate Z that has the least amount of votes in the first round and is eliminated, therefore advancing 5 second-choice votes for X into the next round. Candidate X passes the threshold and wins in the second round.

In group D’, where candidate X received more support than candidate Y, it is candidate Y that has the least amount of votes in the first round and is eliminated, therefore advancing 4 second-choice votes for Z into the next round. Candidate Z then passes the threshold and wins in the second round.

Bibliography:

  1. Doron, G., & Kronick, R. (1977). Single Transferrable Vote: An Example of a Perverse Social Choice Function. American Journal of Political Science, 21(2), 303–311. https://doi.org/10.2307/2110496
  2. https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
  3. https://campaignlegal.org/democracyu/accountability/ranked-choice-voting
  4. https://www.hhh.umn.edu/research-centers/center-study-politics-and-governance/research-and-initiatives-cspg/ranked-choice-voting
  5. Brandt F, Conitzer V, Endriss U, Lang J, Procaccia AD, eds. Handbook of Computational Social Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107446984