From EPEC Team Newsletter:
Virginia Special Election Early Voting Report
Half of Mail-in Ballots Still ‘Out’ — Big Spikes Incoming
By the time this special election wraps the counting on whether to allow Assembly Democrats to draw partisan congressional maps to a gerrymandered 10-1 (D-R) [“yes”] or to keep the current 6-5 (D-R) maps [“no”], Virginia may see presidential-year numbers of mail-in ballots returned.
That’s the assessment of election experts tracking the mail-in ballots that have been “issued” (mailed out) and the sheer volume of ballots being returned so far.
Current Tallies April 9, 2026
With less than two weeks left in early voting that concludes on April 18 ahead of the April 21 Special Election, Daily Absentee List (DAL) data shows 953,614 Virginians have voted on machine, returned a mail-in ballot, or requested a mail-in absentee ballot.
That’s about 16% of the active voting population of just over 6 million.
Countable ballots: 778,338
Breakout averages to:
Mail-in: 237,512
On-Machine: 540,815
Notable: More than half of the mail-in ballots requested (175,276) are still in “issued” status — which means they are still out.
If we tally up a similar number of voting days from 2025 to correlate with 2026 early voting tallies so far, we see about a 5% increase at this stage of early voting.
The mail-in numbers have already exceeded 2025 numbers, when compared to similar voting days, and could even exceed 2024 mail-in rates by the end of voting.
More Ballot Spikes
EPEC Team analysts have been tracking one-day spikes of mail-in ballots returned to general registrars’ offices since early voting began in March.
For example, Fairfax County logged over 8,000 mail-in ballots returned in one day, and thousands during a week alone in March.
EPEC Team Senior Analyst Rick Naigle also observed over a thousand returned in Norfolk City in one day, as well as thousands in one day in Chesterfield and Virginia Beach City localities, for example.
The numbers are outside the norm of ballot-processing rates observed for years, and carry hallmarks of ballot harvesting operations. Although the practice is controversial, Virginia allows “anyone chosen by the voter” to return ballots, with “certain categories of returners that may be excluded.”
Based on some light modeling of the data, EPEC Team sees more Democrat-aligned ballots in some of the spikes — although Republican-aligned voters appear to be returning enough to generate spikes in the data as well. The majority of the preferences on these ballots is unknown. See two of the examples below:
Fairfax County’s outsized election data carries a touch of irony, given its outsized influence in the proposed new congressional maps.
No fewer than five of the proposed new congressional districts use Fairfax County populations to achieve the Democrats’ 10-1 gerrymandered maps.
Indeed, “Don’t Fairfax Me” has become a political slogan used by groups opposed to changing the Constitution “temporarily,” which would enable Fairfax County populations to dominate congressional representation across Old Dominion.
They say some 40% of Republican and independent voters would be locked out of selecting their representatives in the U.S. House because of Fairfax County’s inclusion in their voting districts. That is, if the “yes” vote prevails (and the Supreme Court declines to agree with challenges that say the election itself was illegally construed).
Fairfax County’s mail-in ballot rates are also driving the record numbers.
As of April 8, about five weeks into Early Voting, Fairfax County tallied just under 40,000 mail-ins (shown in green), more than on-machine voters in its tally of 75,664 “countable” ballots.
Sloppy Data, Too
EPEC Team is tracking whether election officials are maintaining orderly processing — with so many thousands of mail-ins coming into the system at once amid the rushed nature of this Special Election. For example:
- Mystery voters are showing up on the Comprehensive Absentee Application List (CAAL) who have no ID match in the Registered Voter List. Currently, we see about a thousand of these records, and are digging into the data to find out why.
- Last month, EPEC Team’s Executive Director and CTO, Jon Lareau, documented 6,109 “approved” records on the CAAL list of permanent absentee applications with no existing record in the RVL, the official list of voter registrations for the Commonwealth. See his analysis here.
- Virginia’s recent monthly update service to the statewide registered voter lists shows over 10,000 “reactivated” voters who had previously sat out at least two federal election cycles but have sprung into action for this election.
- EPEC Team Senior Analyst Rick Naigle has also observed ballot data with a date-stamp of November, 2025. This suggests the locality did not conduct Logic & Accuracy testing on its machines prior to early voting — or that whoever did the testing missed a key data point prior to the start of the 2026 Special Election.
- Naigle also sees ballots processed with dates outside of voting times.
- Some “ballot receipt dates” are showing up on Saturdays and Sundays. Are General Registrars doing this without observers?
EPEC Team is also cross-checking other statuses as shown below:
With some $38 million (and counting) of Democrat-aligned campaign funds sloshing into Virginia to push gerrymandered maps ahead of the midterms — and Republicans having raised about half of that in their fight against the re-drawn maps, it stands to reason that activist groups would be helping voters return ballots.
The DAL data shows this. More in our next report. #
RNC Sues Virginia to Stop Never-Resident Voters
Per RITE’s press release:
“Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections PAC (RITE PAC) has sued the Virginia State Board of Elections and several state and local election officials in state court. RITE PAC joins the Republican National Committee and a concerned voter in challenging a state law that allows U.S. citizens born abroad to vote in Virginia elections based solely on their parent’s registration in the state.
The complaint is here. It is requesting that the court block election officials from registering or accepting ballots from individuals who have never resided in Virginia.
An estimated 20,000 overseas citizens are registered to vote in Virginia. The majority that have never lived in the Commonwealth can use their parents’ address in Virginia to register and cast a ballot. RITE PAC’s lawsuit says it is unconstitutional.
“The Virginia Constitution draws a clear line: voting is reserved to residents of the Commonwealth and of the precinct in which they vote,” said RITE PAC President and CEO Justin Riemer. “That requirement cannot be overridden by statute or replaced with a legal fiction based on someone else’s residency.”
Other lawsuits in states such as North Carolina have challenged a carve-out on voting rules for never-resident U.S. citizens under the UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) statute that RITE PAC is challenging.
As for the election data, we see some 4,902 ballots listed as “overseas” voters (separate from overseas military) in the current DAL data, with some 3,388 in “issued” status and 1,274 in “countable” status thus far. More in our next report. #
- Track your locality, precinct, or city with Daily DAL summary data here.
- Track Ballot Status and Early Voting Tallies from the DAL here.
As one of the ads promoting a “no” vote on the maps says, this is no time to sit out an election. Find your polling place or check your registration here.
And get out to vote! #