'It's annoying:' Voter registration error passed onto local registrars ahead of midterms

by Caitlyn Frolo & Paige Meyer

Wed, November 2nd 2022, 10:47 AM UTC

The Lynchburg Registrar's Office prepares polling booths for early voters. (Source: Madison Doner/WSET)

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — With midterms now less than a week away, we are learning more about a hiccup when it comes to voter registration.

This all comes after Virginia election officials discovered an additional 149,000 voter registration transactions that weren’t properly processed this year, creating a new headache for local election officials in the final week before election day.

The Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) said Monday that this IT issue is directly related to a previously reported computing error involving the statewide voter registration system. They said these transactions include address updates, new registrations, and other changes resulting from visits to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) between May and September of 2022.

Lynchburg's Registrar is also impacted by this statewide problem.

Electoral Board Chairman David Neumeyer tells us the state gave the Lynchburg office 1,060 additional voter registration applications to process on Tuesday.

He said when the tens of thousands of backlogged registrations got released from the DMV to Richmond all at once, the state had to farm them out to the local offices to process...at a time when they're already super busy.

"Normally the department of elections would enter that data themselves in Richmond," Neumeyer said. "The flood is so enormous around the state that they have been sending them out to the local registrar's offices."

Neumeyer said some of these voter registrations date back to May of this year.

ABC13 asked Neumeyer how big of an imposition this has been for them.

"I'd have to say it's annoying. It would have been a lot nicer to get this information month by month than right now just before the election," Neumeyer said.

Neumeyer said he's confident they'll get them all processed in time. But if they don't, he said you'll still be able to vote with a provisional ballot while they verify your registration.

On Monday, ELECT said they have reached out and offered additional staff assistance to any general registrar who requests it.

“I am very grateful for the vigilance of Virginia’s general registrars in quickly surfacing concerns during early voting,” said Susan Beals, Elections Commissioner. “With information from local officials, ELECT’s IT professionals were able to scour the election system data to identify the additional transactions for processing. I’m pleased that all affected voters are able to vote and that anyone with questions or concerns can reach out to us directly so that we may assist them as we near Election Day.”

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All affected voters have been able to vote. Any voter with information that needs to be updated can register and vote up to and including Election Day under Virginia’s same-day voter registration law, ELECT said.

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ABC13 has reached out to the Virginia Department of Elections and the DMV to get to the bottom of this IT issue and why it wasn't caught sooner. We are still waiting to hear back.

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