EPEC NEWS

Early voting in Virginia’s June 17 primary election is about a week in and already some odd data points are popping up, such as more than 65,000 Republican primary ballots that appear to be have been deleted so far.

That is a higher than usual number at this point in the process.

The anomaly in the Republican ballot data may reflect two very different primaries ahead of off-year gubernatorial and statewide elections taking place in the fall.

For example, the Republican party of Virginia has settled on its ticket for statewide offices. Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears is the Republican nominee for governor, John Reid is the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, and current Attorney General Jason Miyares is standing again for the job.

Voters will decide Republican candidates for seven assembly seats. See the full list here.

For the Democrats, Rep. Abigail Spanberger is the nominee for governor, “but six Democrats are running for the lieutenant governor position and two are running for attorney general,” as WVIR notes.

The full list of Democrat statewide and the nine assembly seat primary candidates can be viewed here.

As of May 9, one week after early voting began for the June 17 primary, more than 234,000 absentee ballots have been issued for the D primary, and 10,348 ballots are in “countable” state. (See image below.)

Source: Virginia Dept. of Elections

On the Republican side: as of May 9, the Republican DAL data shows 10,343 ballots issued for the assembly seat primary races (almost identical to the number of “countable” ballots on the Democrat side). The DAL shows 65,554 ballots as deleted. (see chart below), and 1,623 ballots in “countable” state after a week of voting.

EPEC Team is looking into why so many ballots are showing up as “deleted” on the Republican side. (See chart below.)

Source: Virginia Dept. of Elections

Here is a full voter-data breakout of Republican primary ballot statuses for ballot types, such as number of absentee ballots that are “issued” (mailed out), and the number of ballots in “countable” state (already processed and ready to be tabulated, along with on-machine.)

Click into the colors to highlight the ballot data and voting date.

Early voting concludes on June 14th, and Primary Day is June 17th.