The Arlington electorate is getting new voting equipment, possibly as soon as next spring.
Electoral Board members have directed staff to begin negotiations with Unisyn Election Service Online to procure voting equipment for precincts and early-voting sites across the county.
While the equipment will be new, the company’s relationship with Arlington is not.
“This is the vendor we have had the last 10 years,” Electoral Board Chair Dominick Schirripa said at a Tuesday meeting.
The new equipment “was very price-competitive” and “meets the needs we had identified,” Schirripa added, after Electoral Board members emerged from a closed session discussing the matter.
Fewer than a half-dozen firms are certified by the Virginia Department of Elections to provide voting equipment to localities. Electoral Board members and election-office staff met with them before selecting Unisyn.
In Arlington, voting equipment typically is replaced once per decade. The current Unisyn system has been serving since 2015, and county officials had rented some equipment from the vendor to fill gaps during the 2021 presidential election.
Elections director Gretchen Reinemeyer said her office is targeting the June 2026 state primary to have the new equipment ready to go. That means voters would first encounter it in May, when early voting starts.
The new equipment will also allow for an increase in the number of candidates that can be ranked as part of County Board elections. Current equipment limits voters to ranking just three candidates.
This week’s vote doesn’t guarantee that the county will ultimately select Unisyn, but for now, it does make the firm the only one the county will negotiate with.
In 2015, when the most recent equipment was purchased, Arlington phased out touch-screen voting — which a majority of county voters had used — and shifted exclusively to optical-scan readers for ballots filled out on paper.
In other election news:
Date set for ranked-choice tabulation, if needed: Election Day is Nov. 4, but potentially, Arlington voters might have to wait until Nov. 8 to know who wins the lone County Board seat on the ballot.
The Arlington Electoral Board has tentatively set the Saturday after the election for the preliminary run of the ranked-choice-voting process — but only if it’s needed.
With five candidates vying for the lone open Board seat on the ballot, it’s possible that no contender will end up with at least 50% of the vote among first-round selections of the electorate.
But recent history favors against it, as incumbent Democrat Takis Karantonis faces Republican Bob Cambridge and independents Audrey Clement, Jeramy Olmack and Carlos De Castro “D.C.” Pretelt.
Last year, Democrat Julius “J.D.” Spain, Sr., won 58% of the first-round vote against Republican Juan Carlos Fierro, Forward Party candidate Madison Granger and Clement, a perennial protest candidate.
Under ranked-choice voting, if no candidate receives 50% of ballots cast in the first round, the lowest scoring candidate will be eliminated and that candidate’s voters will have their second-choice selections allocated to the remaining candidates. The process repeats in rounds until a candidate reaches an absolute majority.
This happened during the 2023 and 2024 Democratic primaries for Board seats. However, last year’s general election never got to this phase.
Ballot-counting to begin early: Arlington elections-office staff will begin processing mail-in ballots on Wednesday, Oct. 22, a week earlier than required under state law.
“It just helps up operationally,” Reinemeyer, the elections director, said of starting earlier and pre-processing ballots on alternating days.
The alternate option — starting Oct. 27 and processing ballots every business day — would pose logistical challenges for the office, she said.
“There’s no sense at all” to wait until later in October to begin the processing, Reinemeyer told Electoral Board members.
New election officers appointed: An additional 27 new officers of election were appointed by the Electoral Board on Sept. 9.
They will be eligible for service through Feb. 28, 2026, and then can be reappointed for full terms.
These officers are part of a pool of several thousand that can be called on to work the polls on Election Day. Even during presidential-election years, Arlington has a surplus of those who are on call compared to the need.
Outreach offered on ranked-choice voting: With Arlington holding its County Board general election under ranked-choice voting rules for the second year, county elections staff are offering community-based tutorials on the process.
“Feel free to reach out to our office,” Reinemeyer said. “We’re still open to schedule more events.”
Civic associations and community groups are among those that can request information on the ranked-choice format and how it differs from the traditional winner-take-all voting process.
Elections team at the ballpark: Arlington residents attending the second game of the Tuesday, Sept. 16 doubleheader between the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves will find the staff from the Arlington elections office on hand to provide voter information.
Leaders of the D.C. elections office invited them to support voter-outreach efforts as part of National Voter Registration Day.
“Come say hi,” Reinemeyer said.
