The role of Virginia's permanent absentee list in special elections

A recent change to early voting may be helping Democrats in a series of special elections that are about to happen.
 
It’s called the permanent absentee list. Since 2020, voters can ask to receive a ballot in the mail for every election – not an application for a ballot, but the actual ballot for every election, including special elections that most voters don’t pay attention to.

Ben Tribbett is a Democratic consultant who says voters who don’t even know a special election is happening will find out when the ballot arrives in the mail.

“I did a special election a few years ago in Fairfax under these new rules, and it was different than any other special I’d ever done before,” Tribbett says. “Because by the time Election Day rolled around, we knew that 3,000 mail ballots had already been returned and 2,500 of them were for us.”

For now, this is a process that benefits Democrats says former Republican Delegate David Ramadan, who is now at George Mason University’s Schar School.

“Absolutely, the Democrats have the advantage on this in Virginia,” Ramadan says. “They started the absentee registration when Republicans were still on the Trump no-early-voting period. The Republicans have changed that, but Democrats had [a] few seasons on them on this.”

Another new law all but eliminates party-run caucuses to select candidates, but that applies only to regularly scheduled elections, not special elections. So, Democrats and Republicans will be conducting party-run nominating votes for a special election to a Loudoun state Senate seat this weekend.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.