Arlington County Board members made a point, in adopting the government’s fiscal 2025 budget, of announcing they had expanded early-voting opportunities to additional Sundays for the upcoming presidential election.
Not quite.
In recent years, in addition to other voting days, county election officials have in the run-up to elections held one Sunday-early-voting day at the three early-voting sites (the county government headquarters and Madison and Walter Reed community centers). County Board members said their budget plan would allow that to be expanded to three for the fall election.
It would, but mandating that is a power that is not granted to them by the state constitution.
“Early-voting locations are set by the County Board,” county elections director Gretchen Reinemeyer told the GazetteLeader after an inquiry. “Hours for early voting are set by either the general registrar or Electoral Board.”
The Code of Virginia agrees: Code section §§ 24.2-701.2 gives governing bodies of localities the authority to set locations for early voting (as well as the responsibility for funding it), but doesn’t provide them the power to set dates and times.
Under state law, early voting begins 45 days before Election Day, but is only required to be conducted in one location per locality. Adding satellite locations – “as many offices as it deems necessary,” according to the Code of Virginia – is at the discretion of local officials.
Electoral Board members are likely to decide dates and hours of satellite sites over the summer, once they have cleared the Democratic County Board primary and Republican U.S. Senate primary, to be held concurrently June 18.
Sunday-voting options are relatively new in Virginia, but have been seized upon by some religious organizations (spanning the denominational and political spectrums) to use for organized voter-turnout efforts, often dubbed “souls to the polls.”
