Despite continued growth in early voting, Fairfax is facing an increasing space crunch at its Election Day voting locations.
“Many precincts are growing rapidly,” Fairfax County Electoral Board chair Kate Hanley told the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors yesterday (Tuesday) during a review of the 2024 election season.
Consider the case of precinct #332 at Coates Elementary School, south of Herndon along the Loudoun County border. With 6,221 active voters and 7,248 total voters, it’s the largest in Fairfax County and one of the largest in the Commonwealth.
Precincts in Tysons, Merrifield, Reston and Huntington, among other areas, are also beginning to burst at the seams, Hanley told supervisors.
“It’s becoming more and more difficult” to find locations to house voting, according to Hanley.
School buildings are used for a majority of the county’s 264 precincts, including Coates, while the rest can be found in county government facilities, multi-family buildings, religious buildings and other public and community spaces.
“We make use of everything we possibly can,” Hanley said.
Hanley, who used to serve on the Board of Supervisors, asked the elected officials to consider requiring that future development projects include gathering spaces large enough to accommodate precinct operations during elections.
“Arlington has such a provision,” she said. “Fairfax County could have one too.”
The supervisors agreed it was an avenue worth pursuing. Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn noted that Arlington is able to use the first-floor spaces in residential buildings to host voting, though those properties present some challenges compared to commercial sites.
“The parking tends to be more limited,” Alcorn acknowledged.
Many community centers owned by neighborhood groups in Fairfax County would otherwise be usable as polling places, but don’t meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements that election officials must adhere to, county leaders said.
Board Chairman Jeff McKay asked election officials to forward along some ideas for using the development process to provide additional space for voting. He also asked for feedback in other areas “where you see pressure points.”
The 2024 general election saw a turnout of about 592,000 of the county’s nearly 750,000 active voters, Hanley told supervisors. Of those:
- About 243,000 registered voters cast ballots on Election Day.
- Another 239,000 cast ballots at early-voting facilities.
- Just under 70,000 voted by mail.
- Nearly 24,000 deposited ballots in 24/7 dropboxes.
- Approximately 16,000 cast provisional ballots
The number of provisional ballots was notably higher than the approximately 10,000 anticipated by election staff. Most came from those who registered on Election Day at their polling place. It was the first time that Virginia allowed same-day registration for a presidential election.
Each of those ballots needs to be vetted and confirmed within 10 days of the election, which was “an enormous task,” said Hanley, one of the county’s three Electoral Board members.
According to Hanley, the final turnout rate was 72%, slightly higher than the 68% reported immediately after Election Day before all the provisional and mail-in ballots had been counted. Both the total ballots cast and turnout percentage were still below the 2020 totals of 605,000 and 79%, respectively.
At the Dec. 3 meeting, supervisors expressed thanks for an election season that saw no major glitches or reporting delays. McKay said he anticipated that early voting, which was almost on par this year with voting at precincts on Election Day, will continue to grow in popularity.
“If you went to one of those and had a great experience, that’s how you’re going to vote in the future,” he said, suggesting there would be a need to look at expanding the number of early-voting sites.
