Early voting means Henrico could witness its smallest Election Day turnout in 2 decades
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An average of more than 1,700 Henricoans have cast in-person ballots in the Nov. 3 election each day since Sept. 18 – the first date for absentee voting in Virginia – Henrico Registrar Mark Coakley told the Board of Supervisors Oct. 13.
That amounts to more than 30,000 total votes cast in person during that time, and Coakley anticipates another 30,000 will do the same during the next three weeks.
Coupled with the 46,000 ballots his office has mailed to other voters, it’s shaping up to be Henrico’s least-crowded Election Day in two decades, he said.
“Election Day is going to be relatively calm compared to previous elections,” he said, telling supervisors that the county may see only about 70,000 voters show up in person that day.
At its meeting Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved the temporary relocation of four voting precincts – three of which are located in senior living communities and one of which is located at a church that has been closed during the pandemic, and each of which will move to a nearby Henrico school.
The four precincts – Oakview and Stratford Hall (Fairfield District), Cedarfield (Three Chopt District) and Laburnum (Varina District) – each also moved to school sites temporarily for the June 23 primary elections.
Oakview will move to Brookland Middle School, Stratford Hall to Moody Middle School, Cedarfield to Pocahontas Middle School and Laburnum to Montrose Elementary School.
Asked why the decision to move them again is coming so late in the process, Coakley told the board that inquiries sent to each of the senior communities in July were not answered until very recently, and each community requested their precincts to move again, for the safety of residents.
Coakley said that a recent series of break-ins at local post office collection boxes had resulted in only one email from a Henrico voter concerned that a completed ballot mailed from one of those locations had not yet arrived to the registrar’s office. Coakley’s staff sent a new ballot to the voter, he said. (The office’s system only accepts one ballot per registered voter, negating the possibility of voter fraud in such a scenario.)
