The Future of Vote Tabulation is Here

On Monday, Fairfax County gave the public a granular view of how people voted -- something that has been missing in Virginia since early voting has grown exponentially during the pandemic. Like other localities, Fairfax assigns early votes (both mail and in-person) to a "central absentee precinct," not the precinct where voters reside. But Fairfax County set up its ballots in a way that makes it possible to reallocate more than 175,000 early votes cast in the November 2 election back to where voters reside.

Source: Fairfax County Office of Elections and Virginia Department of Elections

Notes: A complete set of precinct-level results makes it possible to analyze how Virginians voted. The blind spot associated with absentee ballots is why the Virginia Redistricting Commission when drawing maps could not consider results from the 2020 presidential elections. The data simply did not exist. In the November 2020 election, only one locality - the City of Chesapeake - set up their ballots so that votes tallied in its Central Absentee Precinct could be reallocated back to the precincts where voters reside. A Board of Elections task force studied the issue this fall, but Fairfax County apparently is the only locality to join Chesapeake in adding a bar code or other styling so early votes would not end up lumped in a CAP that is not associated with a geographic area.