The Falls Church city registrar is advising against using the Postal Service to send mail-in ballots in Virginia’s statewide redistricting referendum.
Especially when it gets close to the April 21 vote, city registrar David Bjerke warned that mailing ballots back to the city’s election office too close to the deadline could result in their invalidation.
For voters using mail ballots, “we are going to continue to recommend that people use the dropbox and hand-deliver,” city registrar David Bjerke said at a Tuesday (March 10) meeting of the Falls Church Electoral Board.
The city’s elections office has sent nearly 1,000 mail ballots to voters, and voters will likely request more in the coming days.
Under state law, ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day, and they must arrive by noon three days later (April 24 in this case). This can make voting by mail dicey since the Postal Service no longer automatically postmarks ballots when they enter the mailstream, and mail sometimes takes over 72 hours to reach its destination.
To improve the odds of a mailed-back ballot being counted, the registrar suggests voters “get it in the mail at least one week before the election.”
Bjerke said he expected most mail ballots to be returned via the dropbox or his office rather than through the mail. It helps that the city is “two square miles and extremely walkable,” he said.
The city’s lone ballot dropbox is located in the parking lot outside City Hall. Voters can drop them there at any time, or can hand them in to election officials in City Hall when that office is open.
The suggestion to avoid returning ballots by mail is not new to the April 21 election.
“We in the previous election encouraged people to use the dropbox,” Electoral Board secretary Alan Wisdom said.
Nor is the message unique to Falls Church. Arlington election officials, too, have cautioned voters not to wait until the last minute if returning ballots by mail.
Based on early trends, Bjerke’s office expects significant turnout in Falls Church. But, he acknowledged, “we may slow down considerably” in the coming weeks.
Even on April 21, when Falls Church’s three voting wards will be open from 6 a.m.-7 p.m., lengthy waits are not expected.
“It’s a single yes-or-no choice — fairly simple,” Wisdom said.
If the referendum wins statewide approval, and the Virginia Supreme Court does not invalidate it, Falls Church will move from the 8th Congressional District to the 7th District.
That means city residents would lose representation from Don Beyer, the Democrat who has represented the 8th District since 2015 and is seeking re-election in it.
Though long associated with Falls Church through business endeavors, Beyer lives in Alexandria, which will remain in the 8th District if redistricting occurs.
The boundaries of each district would be radically changed from their current configurations. The 7th would meander westward to the West Virginia border and southwest to areas west of Richmond. The 8th will run down as far as the Williamsburg area.
While Falls Church would move in its entirety to the 7th if redistricting occurs, Arlington would be split in two. The northern 60% of the county would join Falls Church in the 7th while the southern 40% would stay with Alexandria in the 8th.
