Totals show early voting strong

The latest early voting totals by House and Senate Districts show that early voting is strong in both races.  According to the Virginia Public Access Project, in House District 100 where incumbent Republican Rob Bloxom is being challenged by Democrat Charlena Jones, a total of 6,780 early votes have been cast, roughly 25% of the total votes vast in the 2021 race. Senate District 20, where Republican incumbent Bill DeSteph is being challenged by Democrat Victoria Luevenos, has booked 14,915 early votes.

Early voting does have one advantage besides getting your vote secured early.  While House and Senate races have not been overly contentious in either House District 100 or Senate District 20, data provided by the State Board of Elections to both political parties can identify the names of early voters. To be clear, they do not release how anyone voted but they can let party workers know who voted. Also analytics can be applied to discern party affiliation by tracking the voter’s former participation in primary races.

The advantage to early voters is that once a ballot is cast, the direct mail and telephone solicitations stop, as do pop up ads online.  Voters names are taken off the list and in many cases.

You will still see and hear ads on local and regional TV and radio and the local candidates do not have access to this information so you will be pursued by these candidates up to election day.

Early voting will end Saturday.  Both voter registrar’s offices will be open Saturday November 4. The next opportunity to vote will be at your polling place on election day, Tuesday November 7.

If you  are not registered, you can register on election day and will be issued a provisional ballot which will be counted after the other votes are tallied.