Inside Virginia’s Elections: How Local Officials Keep the Vote Secure and Accessible

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A voter casts a ballot in Virginia as local election officials describe how paper-ballot systems, sealed vaults, daily audits and public transparency combine to protect the Nov. 4 vote from tampering and build public confidence. (Photo by Markus Schmidt/Virginia Mercury)

RICHMOND — Virginia is barreling toward a Nov. 4 general election in which voters will choose a new governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general while also deciding all 100 seats in the House of Delegates.

In cooperation with Keep Our Republic — a civic-education group founded in 2020 as part of a push to counter efforts to undermine confidence in the presidential election — The Mercury spoke with four local officials about what they do to keep voting both secure and accessible: Norfolk Director of Elections and General Registrar Stephanie Iles, Henrico County General Registrar Mark Coakley, Richmond General Registrar David Levine and Virginia Beach Director of Elections Christine Lewis.

What follows is a look at the mechanics of election protection in their offices — in plain terms, and in their own words.

Locking down machines

The backbone of Virginia’s voting system remains paper ballots read by optical scanners — a design choice that reduces the risk of remote intrusion and leaves a hand-countable record. The state Department of Elections says it works with the Department of Homeland Security and the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) to monitor and harden systems.

“We never, ever hook our voting machines to the internet,” Iles, Norfolk’s director of elections, said.

“We have secure locations. We have cameras, we have security systems, we always do things in pairs. We do logic and accuracy testing of every piece of voting equipment, and we do post-election audit testing of every piece of equipment.”

Coakley, Henrico County’s general registrar who has watched technology cycles come and go, noted that Virginia’s return to paper is the point.

“Most people used lever machines or punch cards, then touchscreens, and then we went back to paper,” he said. “You cannot hack paper with optical-scan ballots.”

Levine, general registrar for the city of Richmond, added that for those worried about files created on computers that might ever touch the internet, the system’s layers matter more than any single step.

“Having paper ballots, strong chain-of-custody protocols and rigorous post-election audits … are additional layers” that mitigate risk, he said.

Several Virginia localities have also hosted public “how it works” tours and demonstrations of machine testing to blunt misinformation about hacking and tabulators.

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Watching for fraud

Asked what safeguards exist to detect and prevent voter fraud — and how often they see it — Coakley pointed first to the human presence surrounding the process.

“(Political) parties do a really good job with their poll watchers,” he said. “They observe logic and accuracy testing before the election. Then during the 45 days of early voting, they can come in and watch as one voter at a time checks in, gets a personalized ballot, puts it through the machine and leaves. They can report back to their parties that things are going smoothly — or where more help is needed for a disabled voter.”

Virginia officials have said for years that proven cases of voter fraud are rare; their larger concern is the corrosive effect of false claims on public trust.

Chain of custody, end to end

Lewis, the director of elections in Virginia Beach, said that her office locks down ballots throughout early voting.

“Every day the ballots are stored in our DS300 tabulators. Once it gets to a certain amount, two officers of election put the ballots into a box, they seal the box, everyone signs, and it goes into our secure vault,” she said. “Only certain people have access, and you have to use your badge to get into it.”

Norfolk runs a similar daily sweep, Iles said, and then hands off everything to a neutral custodian: the circuit court clerk.

“On election evening, all of our ballots come back from each precinct, and they are put directly into the custody of our circuit court clerk. We do not access or touch those ballots unless there is a recount or contest. There’s always a chain of custody,” she said.

Precinct chiefs also reconcile how many ballots were issued, voted and left unvoted at close of polls before sealing and returning all materials.

Coordination with state and federal partners

The officials described coordination that ranges from long-planned exercises to race-day troubleshooting.

“For federal elections, we have FBI agents assigned to assist us,” Iles said. “We have our local police, Virginia State Police, the Fusion Center, VITA, the Department of Elections and the State Board of Elections, plus our locality’s emergency operations center.”

Coakley said Henrico runs tabletop drills with local police, the fire department, public works and Dominion Energy to prepare for outages or disruptions and to make sure “everyone has everyone’s cell numbers” in a crisis.

The Virginia Department of Elections notes that its cyber posture is supported by DHS and VITA, and that Virginia systems are monitored and audited to state and Center for Internet Security standards.

Access for every voter

Virginia law requires accommodations such as curbside voting for voters 65 and older or those with disabilities.

Lewis said Virginia Beach uses Pocketalk, a handheld translation device that can convert hundreds of languages into English and has staff who speak French, Tagalog and Spanish.

Richmond offers outreach materials and ballots in English and Spanish, Levine said, and tries to recruit election officers “from a diverse range of constituencies, including the disability community.” Training stresses inclusive language — “for example, to call a pet a service dog” — and respectful ways to assist older voters without playing into stereotypes, he said.

Norfolk employs poll workers with disabilities and partners with groups such as The Arc of Virginia.

“Each voting place offers an ADA-accessible machine,” Iles said, referring to devices in compliance with the American with Disabilities Act. She added that her office coordinates with senior centers and nursing homes on ride times during early voting and Election Day.

Virginia’s 2021 Voting Rights Act further added state-level protections for language access, polling-place changes and early public notice requirements beyond federal law.

Training, audits and accessibility checks

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“There’s required training for officers of election,” Iles said, with emphasis on how to set up and use the ADA-accessible device, and how to correctly assist voters who need help.

Coakley said the State Board of Elections requires localities to complete an annual, detailed ADA compliance survey of polling places — “from the slope of your ramp, to the door handle itself” — which must be uploaded for state review.

Virginia’s early voting period — roughly six weeks — gives officials time to monitor operations, respond to issues and publish audit materials to the public.

Transparency without exposing vulnerabilities

Open government is part of the security model, the officials said, but there are limits.

Coakley said Henrico routinely responds to Freedom of Information Act requests, including for “cast ballot records” — data exported from tabulators that allow outside analysts to study patterns without revealing how any voter voted.

“Anything FOIA-related that we can give to the public, we do,” he said. “We’d rather help the voters and the media than deny access to what we have readily available.”

Levine said Richmond tries to “proactively communicate” when mistakes happen, and invites residents to observe.

“Having people in place who know the rules, who are able to secure equipment properly, and are able to talk with the public about why they’re doing what they’re doing,” is crucial, he said.

The 2024 voter-roll removals and the aftermath

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The Youngkin administration last fall ordered daily removals of noncitizens from voter rolls based on DMV data, a move that touched off a legal fight over whether federal law bars systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election.

A federal judge ordered more than 1,600 registrations restored; days later, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed removals to continue pending appeal. The state’s top elections official later said no additional voters were removed after the ruling.

On the ground, the registrars The Mercury spoke to described the controversy as largely a non-event in their offices.

“It did not affect our office at all,” Lewis said of Virginia Beach. In Henrico, Coakley said there was “not a big increase” in workload — the state publishes daily and monthly report