Absentee voting; establishment of drop-off locations, ballot defects, cure process. (SB1245)

Introduced By

Sen. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) with support from co-patrons Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-Herndon), Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), and Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon)

Description

Absentee voting; establishment of drop-off locations; preprocessing of returned absentee ballots before election day; cure process; accessibility for voters with visual impairment or print disability. Requires certain actions to be taken to process absentee ballots returned before the day of an election, including verifying the correct completion of the voter affirmation statement, and provides for an opportunity for an absentee voter to make corrections to the statement in certain circumstances. The bill requires the establishment of drop-off locations. Additionally, a central absentee voter precinct is required to be established in each locality; currently, establishment is optional. On the day of the election, officers of election are required to begin processing absentee ballots in the central absentee voter precincts prior to the close of polls, but no ballot vote counts are permitted to be transmitted outside of the central absentee voter precinct prior to the close of polls; a violation of such prohibition is a Class 1 misdemeanor. The bill requires a ballot marking tool with screen reader assistive technology to be made available for absentee voters with a print disability. The Department of Elections is directed to convene a work group to consider and evaluate methods for sorting absentee ballots by precinct and reporting absentee ballot totals by precincts. Read the Bill »

Status

04/07/2021: enacted

History