Senate passes voter mapping bill

A key Senate committee passed a bill proposed by a Midlothian senator to provide mapping technology to all localities to ensure voters are assigned to the right district for the coming general elections.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 16-0 Wednesday to pass the bill, SB 1018, sponsored by Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Midlothian, to the full Senate.

Chase’s bill would require each county, city and town to review voter district assignment in each jurisdiction by comparing the information in the voter registration system with the boundaries of districts outlined in a GIS (Geographic Information System) map of the locality. Officials will have to correct any mistaken assignments before the November 2019 general election.

“This bill is a request by the vice chair of the state board of elections,” Chase said at a Finance Committee hearing Wednesday. “It is to ensure that our local registrar is working off the same exact maps as the state board of elections and the department of elections to avoid voters being given improper ballots in the future.”

Assigning voters to the wrong district became a problem during the 2017 elections, when several House of Delegates races were so close that ballots had to be recounted. After about 147 people voted in the wrong race for the 28th district near Fredericksburg and Stafford County, Democrats took the issue to court to request an election do-over.

Although a federal judge declined the do-over, the State Board of Elections launched an investigation and found more than 1,000 addresses that were potentially assigned to the wrong district. Erroneous assignments can happen when district boundaries get redrawn and locality registrars, who assign ballots, are not aware of the changes.

“The problem of GIS accessibility was raised not only in that locality, but in many other localities,” Clara Belle Wheeler, vice chair of the state board of elections, said at the hearing.

The proposed bill intends to decrease the likelihood of these errors by having the State Board of Elections, run by the Department of Elections, provide a GIS map to every locality if they do not yet have one. The board would also provide assistance during the review process to localities that request it.

Some localities already have fully-functioning GIS equipment and can make more accurate ballot assignments than those without the proper equipment, Wheeler said. GIS systems capture three-dimensional spatial features, including district boundaries, and merge them with people’s data for more accuracy.

Implementing the bill would cost approximately $50,000, according to a fiscal impact statement filed by legislators. The funds would go toward hiring a temporary GIS analyst full-time until the November 2019 deadline.

Chase originally submitted this bill in last year’s General Assembly session, but the Privileges and Elections subcommittee voted to carry it over to this year.

“This bill that Senator Chase is providing would allow the Department of Elections to provide GIS for all localities so our populations can be mapped and — grid — put on grids appropriately for voting,” Wheeler said.