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Election Administration Subcommittee

Monday, January 26, 2026·1h 23m·▶ Watch / Listen

The Election Administration Subcommittee advanced seven bills — including measures on machine-counted ballots, satellite voting hours, absentee cure deadlines, provisional ballot notification, election certification as a ministerial duty, and voter roll quiet periods — while killing a voter ID affirmation bill for lack of a motion and tabling a bill that would have let localities choose their own election timing.

Key Actions

·HB 968 – Machine Counting Mandate for Readable BallotsPassed

+ 7 more actions

Controversies

Who should control satellite voting location hours — local governing bodies or electoral boards (HB 71)

Luke Perdee of the Virginia Electoral Boards Association argued that electoral boards 'believe that they are closest to the voters in order to determine staffing needs and understand voter demand' and asked the committee to post the legislation. Delegate Reeser, Tram Win of New Virginia Majority, and Julie Briskman of Loudoun County countered that electoral boards had actively reduced hours to undermine satellite locations — Briskman citing the elimination of Sunday voting in Loudoun by a new electoral board — and argued local governing bodies were more accountable.

+ 4 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“I. I just want to tell you a couple of things that this bill is trying to make it so if a ballot is machine readable, that it sent through the machine and not hand counted. What the current version does not take into account are several instances where there might be extenuating circumstances. So we are working with dls and some of the folks that have brought up some extenuating circumstances to flesh out those”

Delegate Price — Delegate Price cited these figures while presenting HB 968, a bill requiring machine-readable ballots to be counted by machine rather than by hand, to illustrate the inaccuracy and inefficiency of hand counting.

+ 4 more quotes

Votes

Pass by HB 968 (initial)Passed
Reconsider the voice vote to pass by HB 968Passed
Report HB 968 (after reconsideration)Passed
Report HB 71 with substitutePassed
No motion made — HB 1213Failed
Report HB 773Passed
Move amendment on lines 48-50 of HB 774 (telephone/email language)Passed
Report HB 774 as amendedPassed
Report HB 1321Passed
Report HB 78 (initial voice vote)Passed
Report HB 78 (after reconsideration)Passed
Lay HB 51 on the tablePassed
Report HB 28 and refer to Committee on AppropriationsPassed
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TranscriptPreview
Well, good afternoon. Yeah, this is early evening. This is the subcommittee on elections administration. It will come to order. The clerk will open the rows. We'll be sure we have a quorum. Quorum is present. Quorum is present. All right. So before we get into procedure, I want to take a moment and sort of the privilege as the chair to speak to the importance of the work that'll be before this procedure particular committee. We are actually meeting in a moment in history where elections are not simply administrative exercises. They are conversations about trust, about legitimacy, access, and the durability of our democracy itself. And so what happens in rooms like this, quiet and methodically shapes whether Virginians believe their voices matter and whether the systems designed to carry those voices are worthy of their trust. And Virginia's history in this, we know very well. So the commonwealth has been a birthplace of democratic ideals and a testing ground for exclusion from property requirements, untold taxes to literacy tests, and modern debates about access and administration. Virginia election laws have always reflected who we believe belongs in our civic life, and that history is the particular responsibility…
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