The development frees up the U.S.P.S. to move forward on its finalized rule that requires use of a barcode tracking system for election mail, amid more litigation efforts to block the barcode rules.

Democrat-led states, the District of Columbia, and the League of Women Voters had targeted White House Executive Order 14399, issued in late March. It cites federal statutes prohibiting mail fraud and directs the U.S.P.S. to initiate rule-making authority (under 39 U.S.C. 401) for automation-compatible envelopes and unique Intelligent Mail barcodes to track election mail.

As the AP noted: U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, based in Boston, agreed to lift an order prohibiting the postal service from carrying out the U.S.P.S. portion of the EO, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday.

The 6-3 opinion on Aug. 24 cited two doctrines of “justiciability” to issue a stay of the injunction that Talwani had given 23 Democrat-led states.

One is standing, which requires “an injury that is concrete, particularized, and imminent rather than ‘conjectural or hypothetical.’ ”

The other is ripeness, which forbids federal courts to adjudicate disputes that are “dependent on ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’

In lifting the second injunction granted to the League of Women Voters, Talwani wrote in her order: The plaintiffs (LWV) may have “substantial arguments that might persuade the Supreme Court to reach a different result.”

But for now, “this court is compelled by the Supreme Court’s ruling to grant [the Department of Justice] Motion and vacate the preliminary injunction.”

A new round of lawsuits from Democrat-led states, and an amended complaint from the Democrat-aligned League of Women Voters have landed in Massachusetts District Court again.

They argue theories of “harm” from rules that are only now finalized. They claim the Executive Order, which directs the postal service to prohibit mail fraud, is “unconstitutional.”

The filings rely on misdirection about the contents of the EO, and the new rules for that matter. The plaintiffs are claiming the federal government is managing who gets a ballot. That’s not the case.

The question is whether the same judge will again flout federal court rules that require a particular showing of harm to gain standing, or flout Supreme Court holding that lower district courts do not have authority to issue nationwide injunctions.

Per SCOTUS Wire:

‘Unspooling’ the Narrative Spin

The AP’s coverage reflects a kind of strategic distortion about the new U.S.P.S. rules. It claims they would require states to “give the Postal Service a list of voters eligible to receive them.”

The plaintiffs are also using similar narratives to claim the federal government is somehow managing voter lists and deciding who gets a ballot.

Not quite. But the new system is likely to catch duplicate mailings.

The postal service will need names and addresses of where the ballots are going, so they can be integrated with barcodes and envelopes designed to help processing centers expedite election mail.

Democrat-aligned media coverage claimed the U.S.P.S. order would be “impossible to implement in the days before the first wave of mail ballots are sent out next week.”

This is not the first time states have worked with the U.S.P.S. to mail ballots. The system has been developed and in use for years. The final rule works with processes finalized in February. The barcodes are a common feature of secure tracking of mail-in ballots to prepare them for outbound and inbound mail with the barcodes.

The “Official Election Mail Guide,” issued in February, explains it all.

EPEC Team summarized the key details in the new rule, and deployed Google’s Gemini tool to output slides that breakdown the workflow.

We’ve included a summary below. (Pinch up to zoom in on a mobile device.)

Amid the convoluted legal cases that are part of a strategy to disrupt the process and delay the security rules, the rules are open for all to read and understand. #

Also see: Official Election Mail Guide, 2026-2027 #

This post has been updated since we posted it on Aug. 24th.

UPDATE: U.S. Supreme Court issues a stay of Lower Court’s injunction of parts of Executive Order 14399, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”

Massachusetts District Court Judge Indira Talwani has “seriously overstepped the bounds of longstanding Article III standing and ripeness principles,” Solicitor General John Sauer argued in requesting the Supreme Court stay the judge’s injunction of Executive Order 14399.

The Supreme Court decision appeared to agree with many of SG Sauer’s arguments, taking issue with the “speculation” the lower court judge used against parts of EO14399.

The ruling is here.

Background

In June, Judge Talwani took up the cause of (many) Democrat state attorneys general who argued parts of EO 14399 were unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court paused that injunction today. In a 6-3 (unsigned) opinion, the high court wrote:

The Government is likely to prevail on the merits of its argument that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to enter the judgment.

Two related doctrines of justiciability block the States’ suit. One is standing, which requires “an injury that is concrete, particularized, and imminent rather than ‘conjectural or hypothetical.’ ”

The other is ripeness, which forbids federal courts to adjudicate disputes that are “dependent on ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’ ”

When a federal court “improperly intrudes on a coordinate branch” in this way, interim relief is justified,” the opinion noted.

The high court’s ruling addresses key parts of EO 14399 that Judge Talwani blocked:

—First, §2(a) that orders the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take appropriate action to” create and send “State Citizenship List[s]” to each State.

—Second, §2(b) requires the Attorney General to “prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials or any others” who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters.

—Third, §3(b) directs the Postal Service to “initiate a proposed rulemaking” that includes several “[p]roposed provisions.”

The court wrote:

“At the time this suit was filed—the time when standing is measured—the District Court had to engage in a string of speculations to find this suit justiciable. It first had to speculate about whether the Postal Service would propose a rule. Then it had to speculate about how the agency would weigh the comments it received.

“Then it had to speculate about whether the agency would issue a final rule.

“Then it had to speculate about what the final rule would say.

“Finally, after all that, the District Court still had to speculate about whether the text of a hypothetical final rule would harm the States. It should go without saying that the District Court made a decision “dependent on ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’”

The opinion adds:

The States cannot preemptively concretize their injury by expending funds before the Postal Service finalizes a rule. Spending money to hedge against a “speculative threat” does not constitute an Article III injury.

UPDATE: Per ScotusWire:

Hours after its Supreme Court victory, the Trump administration is asking a federal judge to immediately lift her separate nationwide injunction that still blocks President Trump’s executive order directing USPS to adopt new mail-ballot rules.

The second injunction was issued Aug. 11 in a separate case brought by voting-rights groups. It blocks USPS nationwide from implementing Section 3 of Trump’s election order for the 2026 midterms, even though SCOTUS has now lifted the states’ separate injunction.

[The Department of Justice] says the two cases raise the same standing and ripeness problem. SCOTUS held that the states sued too early because the EO merely directed USPS to propose rules and imposed no requirements outside the Executive Branch.

See latest from DOJ: Emergency Motion to Reconsider Preliminary Injunction (Or, in the Alternative, For a Stay Pending Appeal

The latest Supreme Court ruling bodes well for the DOJ’s Aug. 24th stay request of Judge Talwani’s Aug. 11 injunction (correcting prior post that claimed SG Sauer had already filed a second stay. It was actually a supplemental brief).

The second injunction against the U.S.P.S. rule on mail-in ballots also relied on theories about harm to grant standing to the League of Women Voters in their quest to block the forthcoming U.S.P.S. rule before it was issued.

As EPEC Team reported in our last update:

The U.S.P.S. issued new rules Friday for securing mail-in ballots in the midterm election. If the high court also issues a stay of Talwani’s August injunction against the U.S.P.S., the rules are ready to go.

The 95-page rule-notice the U.S.P.S. issued on Aug. 21 does nothing that Judge Talwani’s injunction ordered it not to do in her August 11 ruling.

The rule-notice also addresses some distortions among the over-200,000 comments on the new rule. For example

And it adds:

As SG Sauer wrote in a supplemental brief to the stay application,

The final rule requires federal ballots transmitted through the U.S. Mail to be mailed in envelopes that include the official Election Mail logo, are automation compatible, and use unique barcodes that denote the item’s status as federal ballot mail and its delivery point ZIP code.

The rule amends USPS’s Domestic Mail Manual to impose modest envelope design requirements for federal ballot mail. The rule was issued pursuant to the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority in 39 U.S.C. 401(2) and operational authority in 39 U.S.C.404(a)(1).

The new rule “will not refuse to transmit ballots from individuals who were not included on a state-submitted list, as Section 3(b)(iii) of the [EO had] contemplated,” the administration’s motion says.

Yet the injunction nonetheless precludes the rule’s implementation as to the November 2026 federal election in the respondent states based on the court’s assessments of the Order’s proposals and potential implementation, not the contents or application of a rule actually in effect, Sauer adds.

Today’s Supreme Court pause of one of the injunctions is a win for the Trump administration’s goal to issue election security EOs, amid a volley of motions from groups such as the League of Women Voters.

Despite offering no evidence of harm beyond a claim their voting rights theoretically might be impacted, they were handed standing by Judge Talwani to block U.S.P.S. rule-making authority that Congress authorized to safeguard the mail.

One stay application approved. Another was just filed yesterday. #

Editor’s note: This post has been updated and corrected to reflect that a second emergency stay request of Judge Talwani’s Aug. 11 injunction was filed by the DOJ (not SG Sauer).

Solicitor General John Sauer, in requesting the Supreme Court stay the judge’s ruling, wrote back: “the district court seriously overstepped the bounds of longstanding Article III standing and ripeness principles.”

Not only that, he writes, the lower court prejudged the merits of a “hypothetical rule with provisions the district court could only speculate a final rule might contain.”

That’s the state of play amid frenzied injunctions that lower district courts have rushed out to block the Trump administration’s Executive Orders that enforce federal law prohibiting fraud in elections.

In this case Judge Talwani’s injunctions involve EO14399, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”

Section 3 of that EO addresses federal statutes that prohibit the “unlawful use of [the] mail” in connection with federal elections.

In June, Judge Talwani took up the cause of Democratic state attorneys general by asserting that core parts of EO 14399 could not take effect. She then issued another injunction on Aug. 11th on behalf of the League of Women Voters, which used the EO to speculate what the U.S.P.S. might issue — and blocked it based on a guess.

Amid appeals of her injunctions to the Supreme Court, the U.S.P.S. issued new rules Friday for securing mail-in ballots in the midterm election. If the injunctions stays are lifted, the rules are ready to go.

(This would not be the first time the Supreme Court and appeal courts have issued stays on this judge’s injunctions of Trump administration policies.)

The 95-page rule-notice the U.S.P.S. issued on Aug. 21 does nothing that Judge Talwani’s injunction ordered it not to do.

The rule-notice also addresses some distortions among the over-200,000 comments on the new rule. For example:

And it adds:

As SG Sauer writes in the his latest Supreme Court application to stay all of the lower district court injunction:

The final rule requires federal ballots transmitted through the U.S. Mail to be mailed in envelopes that include the official Election Mail logo, are automation compatible, and use unique barcodes that denote the item’s status as federal ballot mail and its delivery point ZIP code.

The rule amends USPS’s Domestic Mail Manual to impose modest envelope design requirements for federal ballot mail. The rule was issued pursuant to the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority in 39 U.S.C. 401(2) and operational authority in 39 U.S.C.404(a)(1).

Contrary to Judge Talwani’s injunction, the new rule “will not refuse to transmit ballots from individuals who were not included on a state-submitted list, as Section 3(b)(iii) of the [EO had] contemplated,” the administration’s motion says.

Yet the [prior] injunction nonetheless precludes the rule’s implementation as to the November 2026 federal election in the respondent states based on the court’s assessments of the Order’s proposals and potential implementation, not the contents or application of a rule actually in effect, Sauer adds.

Meanwhile, SCOTUS Wire noted, the “Supreme Court remains silent on President Trump’s bid to restore his election executive order,” while voting rights groups have rushed into Judge Talwani’s court again (a day after the U.S.P.S. issued the rules) to get the rule itself thrown out.

Hence the administration’s (expected) application to stay both injunctions and get the lower courts out of the postal service’s clear authority to issue security rules for mail-in ballots.

In response to the League of Women Voters latest motion demanding the rule be tossed out, Judge Talwani is now ordering the Trump administration to file more responses Tuesday about the new U.S.P.S. rules.

It’s a volley of motions from groups that are offering no evidence beyond a claim their voting rights theoretically might be impacted. Yet they are handed standing by Judge Talwani to block U.S.P.S. rule-making authority that Congress authorized to safeguard the mail.

We await the Supreme Court’s decision on this application and other stay appeals. #

UPDATE: The Supreme Court issued a stay of the June injunction (see ruling here), and the DOJ soon after filed an emergency stay of Talwani’s August injunction against the U.S.P.S. rule on securing mail-in ballots.

See our updated coverage here.

Other turnout notes: Virginia usually holds primary elections in June. The August time frame for Early Voting and Primary Day in 2026 may have been another factor in the low turnout numbers.

Summary Stats and Ballot Types

• Virginia’s Primary Election unofficial results show that 3.79% of the Commonwealth’s registered electorate voted in Republican primary races to cast 243,572 ballots for U.S. Senate and congressional seats.

• Depending on the locality and which congressional districts, turnout percentages ranged into the low single digits in competitive races.

• For the Democrat candidates, turnout averaged 6.69% of registered voters who cast 211,034 ballots in primaries for congressional races and local offices.

• Summary stats: Democrat party results (unofficial).

• Summary stats: Republican party results (unofficial)

In the statewide Republican primary race for Senate, Bert Mizusawa, a retired Major General of the U.S. Army and Harvard Law School grad, ran away with total votes cast to win the nomination to face Democrat incumbent Sen. Mark Warner in the fall.

Mizusawa won every category of voting: Early, Mail-ins and Election day (See ballot breakdowns below).

Congressional candidates for six competitive races out of Virginia’s 11-seat delegation are set (challengers in italics):

CD 1: Incumbent Republican Rob Whitman vs. Democrat Shannon Taylor

CD 2: Incumbent Republican Jen Kiggans vs. Democrat Elaine Luria

CD 5: Incumbent Republican John McGuire vs. Democrat Tom Perriello

CD 7: Incumbent Democrat “Eugene” Vindman vs. Republican Douglas Ollivant

CD 9: Incumbent Morgan Griffith vs. Democrat Joy Powers

CD 10: Incumbent Democrat Suhas Subramanyam vs. Republican Dave Beckwith

(CD8: Democrat incumbent Rep. Don Beyer fended off four primary challengers to seal his re-election as he faces no Republican in the fall midterm elections.)

Unofficial Summary Results by Ballot Types

• Voters in the Republican party largely showed up on Primary Election Day, though all the winning candidates performed in all three ballot categories.

• See breakout of ballot types below. Totals are shaded in light green. Pinch out to zoom in on mobile devices.

• Democrat congressional primaries show that the majority of voters showed up on Primary Election Day, with fewer mail-ins during the Early Voting stretch — yet enough to make the difference for the winners.

• See breakout of ballot types below. Totals are shaded in light green. Pinch out to zoom in on mobile devices.

Election workers and officers noted a recurring comment they heard from many voters throughout the day: confusion over which congressional districts were holding primaries. Others questioned why voters were not better informed about the primary races and candidates prior to Election Day.

Still others noted that 2026 may be remembered as the year of the exhausted electorate amid one of the busiest years for voting:

—A flurry of special elections to replace candidates who left assembly seats to serve in the Spanberger administration.

—A Special Election on redistricting in April that the Supreme Court of Virginia tossed out as unconstitutional.

Rest up, Virginia voters. The 45-day Early Voting period for the midterm elections begins in about six weeks. #

Ahead of Primary Day on Tues., Aug. 4th, overall early voting results are below EV tallies from the 2024 Republican and Democrat primaries, held in June of that year.

(The majority-Democrat assembly changed the dates of the primary elections to make room for the rushed redistricting Special Election in April, which the Supreme Court of VA declared unconstitutional on multiple counts.)

2026 Primary Election Early Voting Stats, Tallies & Charts

According to the (unofficial) Daily Absentee List (DAL) of early voting from Virginia’s Dept. of Elections we see:

Democrat Primary: 91,747 ballots cast (mail-in and in-person)

—Breakdown: 45,395 (in person) and 51,752 (mail in)

Republican Primary: 67,457 ballots cast (mail-in and in-person)

—Breakdown: 38,170 (in person) and 29,287 (mail in)

EPEC Team breaks the numbers out slightly differently than VPAP, although we use the same DAL data feed provided by Dept. of Elections.

See summary data below (pinch out to zoom in on a mobile device):

• Turnout numbers align with key congressional races where Republicans and Democrats are vying for a chance to take on incumbents in hopes of changing the current 6-5 (D-R) delegation and control of Congress in the midterm elections.

• Republicans are also selecting among U.S. Senate candidates to face incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Warner.

See all the candidates for federal and statewide offices in Virginia here.

In addition to challenging Republican incumbent Rep. John McGuire in Congressional District (CD) 5, Republican primary candidates are lining up to challenge Democrat incumbent Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman in CD 7 and Democrat Suhas Subramanyam in CD 10.

Balloting stats from Early Voting are below (pinch out to zoom in on a mobile device):

In the Democrat primary for CD 1, no less than 7 candidates are vying for the nomination to face Republican incumbent Rob Whitman.

Four Democrat candidates are lining up for the nomination to face CD 2 incumbent Republican Jen Kiggans.

In addition, Democrat incumbent Rep. Don Beyer of CD 8 is facing four challengers in his re-election bid.

• Like the Republican EV tallies above, ballot-status breakouts for Democrat primary early voting results provide detail on mail-ins that are “still out” (shown in blue).

• Per Dept. of Elections: By-mail ballots “must be postmarked on or before election day and received by your general registrar's office by noon on the third day following the election (In the event that that day is a holiday, the deadline is moved to the following business day).”

• See more details on deadlines for returning mail-in ballots here.

Polls open Tuesday at 6 am and close at 7 PM. Find your voting precinct here. We urge you to get out and vote! #

So when the nonprofit Judicial Watch blasted out a press release showing that Virginia removed over 6,500 noncitizens from voter rolls over a two-year span, we were happy to see another entity checking the numbers, especially a big name outfit.

JUDICIAL WATCH: Virginia Removes 6,531 Declared Noncitizen Registrations from Voter Rolls

EPEC Team’s Rick Naigle, and Erin Marie Joyce offered some thoughts on the data Judicial Watch received from its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to VA’s Department of Elections.

Erin Marie Joyce:

We found the press release helpful for the massive audience that JW reaches, which grabbed the attention of many groups whose work overlaps with ours.

The numbers align with EPEC’s direct analysis of Virginia’s official voting records covering the same, two-year span (June 2024 to June 2026).

Our overall numbers of noncitizens removed from voter rolls are higher than JW’s numbers because Jon Lareau, EPEC’s volunteer chief technology officer and one of its founders, has been tracking this activity since 2022.

As he posted in June of the 8,566 removals of self-declared noncitizens that we have tracked for four years, “we see 1,756 registrations with a corresponding record of ballots cast, according to the statewide Voter History List (VHL) record.”

Virginia’s constitution prohibits anyone but U.S. citizens from voting, as do federal statutes, as Judicial Watch noted:

18 U.S.C. § 1015(f) — makes it a crime to knowingly make a false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote or vote in any federal, state, or local election.

18 U.S.C. § 611 — is the direct prohibition on aliens voting in any election for federal office.

Lareau also goes one step further in his analysis of voter-rolls EPEC qualifies to receive for its nonprofit mission.

He cross-references the noncitizen removals with voting history records to see if they are voting before removal. They are. Repeatedly.

Of those 1,756 noncitizens that show a voting history, Lareau’s analysis has detected 6,111 illegal ballots cast, according to official voting history records going back to 2019. See his June analysis here.

That works out to 6,111 Virginia citizens whose ballots were canceled out by noncitizens voting in different elections, without detection — until they “self-declared” they are ineligible.

According to Judicial Watch founder Tom Fitton’s podcast, they did not receive any information about voting histories in the FOIA request.

In his podcast, he muses about obtaining them. We offer some insights on that.

Canceled Noncitizens Leads to Vanishing Voter History

One method Judicial Watch might consider to obtain noncitizens’ voting histories would be to order a List of Those Who Voted.

VA’s Department of Elections offers this list of past elections to any group using it for voter-participation and education purposes. The timing of the purchases is key. Why?

Thanks to Lareau’s research on Virginia’s voter rolls, we also know this: When the Department of Elections removes and/or cancels voter registrations, such as deceased individuals and ineligible noncitizens, it also deletes their voting history.

Therefore, if one orders a LTWV after noncitizens are removed, the voting history may have been deleted by then. The same is true for deceased voters. Once that registration is canceled, the voting history is apparently removed.

We at EPEC have never understood why Virginia’s Dept. of Elections would alter its historic election records this way. We think accurate records of voting history are critical to building public trust in elections; we maintain archives of voter history.

EPEC is documenting this to educate the public about the problems in the National Voter Registration Act’s “Motor Voter” system that automates voter registration in many states for anyone who receives a driver ID, including noncitizens.

It is illegal to register noncitizens, but they are clearly showing up on the rolls.

We have yet to see any felony charges brought in VA against noncitizens who voted. #

Rick Naigle:

Hats off to Judicial Watch for exposing the tip of the Virginia Registered Voter List iceberg regarding noncitizens on the voter rolls. It’s happening in many states.

The press release on 6,531 noncitizens removed also cited Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones’ letter to the Department of Elections in April. It describes the process followed by the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Elections to identify and remove “all persons who have indicated a noncitizen status” when applying for or renewing a license or identification document.

Virginia Election Officials Allow Illegal Registrations

Judicial Watch reported that Virginia agreed to pause removal of “Declared Noncitizens” from voter rolls for the so-called 90-day “quiet period” prior to Federal Elections.

Also in April 2026, Virginia entered into a settlement with leftist groups in which Virginia agreed to pause the program to remove declared noncitizens from voting rolls for the 90-day period before federal elections. (The Attorney General letter cited above confirms this new policy.)

Citizens of the Commonwealth might let that sink in. An individual has been identified as ineligible due to noncitizen status.

The individual admits in writing: not eligible.

Instead of accelerating their removal, Virginia now allows those noncitizens to remain on the voter rolls, apparently for “more research,” according to official guidance from Virginia’s Commissioner of Elections.

The policy to hold them on the rolls longer is showing up in maintenance reports.

“We have already seen an order of magnitude difference in the data since June 1, 2026, which covers the May time-period in the new policy,” Lareau noted in June.

The July maintenance numbers came out today, August 1. EPEC Team will update analysis on the noncitizen removals this week.

Noncitizens Are Voting

Between 2023 and 2026, we tally more than 6,000 ballots cast by the noncitizens.

A total of 800 ballots were cast by noncitizens between 2024 and 2026, an average of 267 per year.

It is worth noting that some of these ballots were cast in primary elections, so the number cast in General Elections is less.

PROOF Of Citizenship Is The Answer

The corrective action should be documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration, which is often integrated into “legal presence codes” that the Department of Motor Vehicles acquires before it issues driver IDs.

EPEC Findings

I analyzed Virginia Department of Elections Monthly Update Status (MUS) files from January 2022 through December 2026.

While the period is from a slightly different period of time than the data provided to Judicial Watch, the numbers are similar, except we have clear evidence of noncitizen voting. We also know that voting history “vanishes” over time as voters are removed from the Voter History List.

EPEC has documented noncitizen voting in Virginia for years. It is not new, but the number of noncitizens voting appears to have increased over time.

For more information about noncitizen voting, see Lareau’s previous updates from March 2024, July 2024, Sept 2024, Oct 2024, Nov 2024, Dec 2024, March 2025, August 2025, and Jan 2026. It is based on data from VA’s Department of Elections. #

Noted: Judicial Watch also requested the records of Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the voter roll maintenance organization with a controversial history, now back in a contract with Virginia.

Judicial Watch’s FOIA asked for:

All ERIC reports, data, match lists, or other records received from or related to the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) system concerning potential voter deaths, change-of-address notifications, or other eligibility issues (including any associated processing, verification, or removal actions taken by the Department of Elections in response to such ERIC reports).

EPEC Team members also filed a FOIA to obtain the contract between Virginia and ERIC. Download it in the link below:

https://epec.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/ERIC-Bylaws-and-Membership-Agreement-signed.pdf

On pg. 14, it says: “Under no circumstances shall [Virginia] transmit an individual’s record where the record contains documentation or other information indicating that the individual is a non-citizen of the United States.”

We think that policy may create conditions where noncitizens are eventually re-registered. More on that in our next report.

Finally, check out this one-pager about our impact on voter-roll accuracy using data analysis, and to consider a donation to EPEC Team.

We are volunteer-driven and appreciate any help in our mission of trusted elections. #

DONATE

Mail-in voters in foreign, military/overseas, and out-of-state categories have substantially higher ballot-completion failure rates compared to no-excuse mail-in ballots (27–37% vs. ~20% for Virginia addresses).

Statistics in an already over-burdened U.S. Postal Service show this. The biggest reason is volume. The more no-excuse mail-in ballots that are in transit, the higher the risk that mail-ins won’t be processed by mail-delivery centers in time.

The SAVE America Act would level the playing field for out-of-state voters by returning states to pre-Covid requirements for absentee by-mail voting.

In Virginia, the average is one in four mail-in ballots not processed in time, as my research of delivery rates from 2020 to 2023 has shown.

EPEC Team Voter News

Best Voting-Success Stat? In Person.

Virginia’s 45-day early voting stretch is underway for the 2024 Presidential Primary (Jan. 19-Mar 2nd, with Super Tuesday on March 5th…

Read more

3 years ago · Rick Naigle

The U.S.P.S. has been navigating new procedures that call into question whether it will be able to post mark a mail-in ballot by the legally required date — no later than Election Day, because of the volumes of mail it is already handling.

According to the U.S.P.S. in a June update:

”While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mail pieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed.

“This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mail piece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.”

Mail-in voters will have to request a hand-stamp in person, if that is available.

The SAVE America Act would ensure by-mail ballots are prioritized for those with a disability and not able to vote in person, all military and dependents, and citizens who travel outside of Virginia during the voting period, for example.

ANALYSIS

I analyzed by-mail ballot success using official data from Virginia’s 2024 General Election, and studied how the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Access to Voting Act (UOCAVA) was applied.

In Virginia, just over 92% of the 635,573 Virginians who voted By Mail in 2024 did so out of convenience, or the “no-excuse” method of requesting a mail-in ballot.

The other 8% were primarily cast by overseas, out-of-state voters who must use mail-in balloting, as well as citizens who are disabled.

I analyzed summary data on these ballots, and also checked the numbers with an AI engine. The results were consistent. Voters in the foreign, military/overseas, and out-of-state categories have substantially higher failure rates (27–37%) compared to no-excuse mail-in ballots (~20%) from Virginia addresses.

METHODOLOGY

By-Mail voters were sorted into four categories for tracking:

--1. Uniformed (military and military dependents)

This voting group population lives more than 25 miles from their home of record, (their legal residence). When stationed away from home, Uniformed military and dependents have no option but to vote By Mail.

--2. Overseas Citizens

By definition, these voters reside outside of the United States or its territories. Their overseas addresses are assumed to be serviced by foreign postal services. When we look at this group of voters, we notice that many “Overseas” are, in fact, not actually overseas and actually stateside.

These voters are either mischaracterized, or perhaps voting when they are not citizens of Virginia. Some may never have resided in Virginia.

--3. Temporary (Federal Only)

This category should represent Virginia citizens who work for the federal government and are temporarily out of the Commonwealth on duty.

--4. No-excuse mail-in ballots:

This group (defined here as non-UOCAVA) consists of voters who cast an absentee mail-in ballot as a convenience.

For our analysis, we grouped By Mail ballots by area, and when ballots were mailed, using the following headers: Virginia, nearby States, Assumed Foreign (addresses which do not have a US State or Territory in the Mailing address field).

Foreign addresses dominate non-Virginia volume and failures — likely due to international mail delays, address-formatting issues, or UOCAVA complications.

Military / Overseas / Temp voters showed higher uncounted/deleted rates across most state groups, consistent with known challenges for these categories.

The huge volume of “no-excuse” absentee by-mail voters places a huge burden on the voting system itself, not to mention the carriers. It drives up voting costs (it is much more expensive to vote by mail than to vote in person).

Voters who must vote by mail to have their ballots received on time, and counted when returned, are facing difficult processing rates.

The routing of mail-in ballots through the U.S.P.S. Regional Processing Centers comes into play in our analysis. Any ballots routed through these centers adds more processing time to the overall voting cycle of receiving and returning a mail-in ballot.

Some states have multiple regional processing centers (RPCs). Some states have none. In Virginia, where I reside, multiple RPCs handle ballots. One is within Virginia. Several are out of state.

A reasonable estimate could be that each ballot transiting through the mail adds anywhere between $10 to $50 in extra processing costs.

In Virginia, the volume in 2024 was the following, according to official records of the Department of Elections: 635,573 voted By Mail during the 45-day early-voting period.

Of these, 589,780 were non-UOCAVA voters, and another 449,033 voted from mailing addresses within Virginia.

Why does this matter? The voters (UOCAVA and disabled, for example) who must vote by mail “compete” for attention with the carriers.

They are less likely to receive voter assistance. They are less likely to get an “assist” from ballot trackers and ballot harvesters who now play larger roles in the chain of custody of mail-in ballots in Virginia.

In effect, voters who have no recourse but to vote by mail are not on an equal playing field. The odds are stacked against their mail-in ballot being handled in time.

The SAVE America Act levels the playing field by restricting mail-in voting to those with a disability, military, or who travel, and gives them a better chance their ballot will be received in time for tabulation.

The SAVE America Act returns mail-in balloting to the traditional exceptions prior to 2020, the Covid election year. It is a matter of fairness, a level playing field, equal access to voting, and a voter rights issue. #

Rick Naigle is board member and a Senior Data Analyst for EPEC. He can provide in-person briefings about the research for this report, and other balloting audits he conducts. Contact us at EPEC.info or reply to this email to find out more.

The Department of Homeland Security also reports that roughly 278,000 foreign nationals are currently enrolled to vote (in violation of the law), in just four of the states that have cross-checked voter rolls with naturalization information.

We are still reviewing the tranche of documents released so far, which can be downloaded here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/election-integrity

Per the Election Integrity Network’s new website section, here are some highlights from the 13,000- 14,000 documents in the first tranche (out of 11 million reviewed):

• Intelligence was deliberately withheld. Career officials created mechanisms to keep foreign election threat information from President Trump and Congress. For political reasons.

• Voting machine vulnerabilities were confirmed. Five separate intelligence assessments assessed the vulnerabilities, including protocols transferable from foreign regimes that could swap data and erase traces. This was also suppressed.

• Michigan registration fraud went unpunished. Workers were coached to invent names and sign for others. The FBI slow-walked the information until the statute of limitations on the crimes expired.

• Foreign nationals are on the voter rolls. Tens of thousands already identified across 18 states, with projections of 1 to 2 million nationwide.

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment:

The documents also show that intelligence assessments raised concerns about the breach and other malign activities by the communist regime on five separate occasions between 2020 and 2026.

The emails in the document releases show politicized intelligence officials scheming to suppress the communist regime’s targeting operations in the U.S. by spreading it across different intel reports.

In an email chain, FBI intelligence intelligence official Nikki Floris wrote:

“I’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point.”

Floris is reportedly working at Microsoft.

Democrat-aligned media outlets are spinning hard today to downplay the extent of the CCP’s activities in election systems. “Election Online,” which positions itself as a neutral presenter of election information and is affiliated with The Election Center run by state election officials, ran a headline claiming “Trump rehashes claims of election vulnerabilities.”

That was the extent of its coverage.

Today, we know that a communist regime, hostile to the Trump 1.0 administration’s trade policies (which declared a “People’s War” on America in 2019), pilfered 220 million voter files containing PII and the American people did not know.

That data can be used to request absentee ballots, even change voter-registration information. More to follow as we read through. #

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is considering a rule change that could finally level the playing field in voter-participation grants to nonprofits.

As a nonprofit in this sector, EPEC supports this change. The new rules curb prior exclusionary practices under the banner of “DEI.” The federal taxpayer should not be forced to fund registrations of favored groups over disfavored groups.

See OMB’s Regulation Proposal OMB-2026-0034.

Background:

• Under this new rule, NGOs are still able to conduct voter registration drives with other funds.

• 31 U.S.C. 1352 (Byrd Anti-Lobbying Provision) prohibits using Federal Funds to conduct activities that are not neutral towards the Federal Government.

• Reports of widespread fraud from Federal Programs show this new OMB rule is needed.

• A competent, well-run NGO will be able to handle compliance and reporting requirements as required by law and with common-sense accountability rules.

• A single comprehensive change allows consistency by all agencies regarding the handling of Federal Grants. It standardizes the process of grant administration.

The new rule would remove activities that do not align with federal statutes.

The comment period closes at midnight tonight (July 13, 2026)!

You can leave a comment on the rule here:

Full Details: Regulation Proposal OMB-2026-0034

Background

For too long, left-leaning nonprofits and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been using federal grants for prohibited partisan advocacy, while groups who play by the rules of neutrality are often shut out of the process.

Many grantees have been documented engaging in fraudulent registrations, partisan targeting and illegal ballot harvesting operations.

The new OMB rules create deterrence with more accountability to grantees regarding activities that are required to be neutral to the U.S. government.

The bottom line with the new OMB rule:

Federal grants to nonprofits are not being eliminated.

The new rules add more accountability to managing conflicts of interest, and policy alignment with the grant itself.

EPEC Team supports this rule change because it incorporates fairness and transparency in how federal grants are awarded and spent.

If you are inclined to weigh in, there is still time to comment here.

The deadline is midnight, July 13 (tonight). #

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Some highlights — starting with the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

Slaughter Effect at the EAC

President Trump has dismissed three remaining commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), per multiple reports. The move follows the Supreme Court’s Trump v. Slaughter ruling which affirmed the chief executive’s authority to oversee the executive branch when he fired Democrat-appointee commissioner Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission.

Reuters reported that commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin W. Hovland, both Democrat appointees, were fired by email. Republican commissioner Christy McCormick was asked to resign via a phone call.

Don Palmer, a Republican appointee and fourth commissioner, resigned in April as chair and has since joined Heritage.

A White House official’s statement to Reuters cited the Trump v. Slaughter case:

The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.

The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so. The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections.

Democracy Docket, affiliated with election-security denier and uber-Democrat Marc Elias, called the decision a “Sweeping Attack” on elections, while quoting Democrat organizations claiming it would impact their oversight of elections.

Followers of EAC might be forgiven for stifling a laugh over Reuters’ story that claimed the move would “hamstring” the “bipartisan” agency ahead of the midterms.

Any bipartisan critique of the EAC would agree it is hamstrung by its own bureaucracy, especially in developing security standards and testing labs to help states adopt best practices in election security.

In point of fact, as Just Security noted, the day-to-day of EAC’s work goes on, including dispersing grants to states for election upgrades, and overseeing election-vendor certifications to its Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0 standard.

With no commissioners, the agency’s authority will go to the EAC Executive Director, who has limited authority to continue running EAC operations as outlined in the EAC’s Roles and Responsibilities policy.

Although the EAC retired its certification of vendors to Version 1.0 of its Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) in 2023, many election vendors are still using those 20-year-old guidelines in today’s elections. They need to be incentivized to upgrade.

A final approval to VVSG 2.1, considered a point upgrade (not a major change from its VVSG 2.0 standard) can’t be approved without a new slate of commissioners. The board and its advisory committees have been reviewing the 2.1 upgrade long before the commissioners were fired. Why the delay?

An observation from a member of the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee, during a meeting to discuss the White House March 25, 2025 Executive Order on securing election systems, may provide context.

“Let’s be blunt,” said TGDC member Paul Lux during an Aug. 8th, 2025 EAC advisory group meeting on voter-verified paper ballots. “In another 2.5 years, another Executive Order could come along that says ‘stick it all back in there,’” said Lux, a supervisor of elections for Okaloosa County, Fla.

Working groups like this one at the EAC are notorious for members who constantly request more meetings, and appear to look for delays during their working sessions.

The firings of the commissioners may be their wake up call. Jonathan Turley, law professor and media pundit, observes:

President Trump “came to power with a pledge to transform our government by making it smaller and more responsive, as well as to carry out sweeping reforms in areas such as immigration enforcement [and election security]. He was stymied by lower courts imposing dozens of injunctions and even federal officials who gummed up the works.”

With the Slaughter decision, Turley addes, the Supreme Court “has cleared much of that away for the president, and he carried out a wholesale house cleaning of agencies.”

As for the EAC commissioners, a White House official said they would be replaced. #

Letters to States, Following the Law

Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General, has sent a letter to all 50 states detailing the federal election laws they are bound to observe.

In her letter to Michigan’s Secretary of State, Dhillon cites relevant statutes that make it a “crime for ‘an election official’ in a federal election to ‘knowingly and willfully deprive, defraud, or attempt to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the [election official] to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent…” Full letter is here.

She is putting all states on notice:

The DOJ is also monitoring elections in select jurisdictions across six states, which it has historically done in years past. On the list: Virginia.

Blue states that have welcomed DOJ observers in prior administrations are suddenly up at arms.

Dueling Rulings on the SAVE Database for Voter-List Maintenance

A federal judge in Florida has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to immediately restore key features of a federal immigration verification system that several states rely on to check voter rolls and professional license applicants, per Florida TV station News4JAX.

“U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, of the Northern District of Florida, issued the ruling July 7, granting an emergency motion filed by Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana to enforce a settlement agreement with DHS.”

Wetherell’s ruling took issue with Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the D.C. district, whose June 22nd ruling siding with the League of Women Voters claimed a nationwide injunction to stop the use of the SAVE database.

Of the dueling rulings, “Judge T. Kent Wetherell II got the SAVE system ruling right, and he got it right for a reason most coverage missed,” writes Jay Rogers in the Washington Examiner.

“He didn’t write a new national rule. He enforced a contract.”

On July 7, the Florida-based federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore bulk-upload and Social Security number search features in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, the tool several states use to check citizenship status against voter rolls.

The order grew out of a settlement DHS reached with Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, filed in November 2025 and approved that December. DHS honored the deal for six months, then shut the features off on June 23 after a different judge blew up the policy.

Read the Examiner’s critique here explaining why Sooknanan, who has since ordered up a rejoinder ruling of sorts, is not only wrong on the law, but is abusing her regional district court authority to bind the nation. In response, Republican Congressman Abe Hamadeh of Arizona filed articles of impeachment against her this week while appeals move on. #

U.S.P.S. Rule-Making Presses On

The Trump administration is also appealing two district-level judges who issued nationwide injunctions on a White House Executive Order for the U.S. Postal Service to add security to mail-in ballots.

Like Sooknanan’s actions, it is unclear how regional district judges have authority to issue nationwide injunctions, given a recent Supreme Court ruling that says district judges exceed their authority with nationwide injunctions.

The March 31, 2026 EO states that the “unlawful use of the mail in connection with elections is prohibited by various Federal statutes, including 18 U.S.C. 1341, 18 U.S.C. 1708, 52 U.S.C. 10307, and 52 U.S.C. 20511.”

Groups such as America First Legal are urging the U.S.P.S. rule-making to upgrade mail-in security features, such as:

• Creating a standardized Official Election Mail logo for federal ballot envelopes.

• Requiring unique Intelligent Mail barcodes (IMb) to use in tracing ballots.

• Establishing participation lists for election officials using the Federal Ballot Mail Portal.

• Adding a verification process to help ensure ballots are mailed to individuals on approved participation lists.

The legal fights go on. #

VA Primary Check In

Back in Virginia, one might say the voting trickles on. As of midweek, turnout for the Aug. 4th Republican and Democrat primary elections is as follows:

Approved and Countable early ballots (R): 14,733

Approved and Countable early ballots (D): 26,249.

Check your registration status here.

Also, the Department of Elections Pocket Guide, with key dates for mail-in ballots and in-person voting, is here. #

At the time 250 years ago, ruthless tyrants, kings, warlords, and chieftains still ruled the world as the American Revolution against the British monarchy began to unfold.

“It was not puffed-up rhetoric for them to pledge to each other ‘our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,’ wrote journalist and historian Theodore White of the founding fathers:

Unless their ‘United States of America’ won the war, the Congressman would be judged traitors as relentlessly as would the irregulars-under-arms in the field. And we all knew what English law allowed in the case of a traitor. The victim could be partly strangled; drawn, or disemboweled, while still alive, his entrails then burned and his body quartered.

These were very tough men fighting for an unheard-of idea of self-governance, as laid out by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on July 4^th, 1776:

And here we are on this great anniversary, after years of struggle to perfect the union, and secure human liberty, looking over the state of our nation’s elections, asking: are these processes any way to confer (or withdraw) our consent?

We see state governments of one party fighting to keep voter rolls from law enforcement review, telling us to trust them anyway.

When we see basic voter-list data, such as full dates of birth in registration lists, increasingly removed from public scrutiny by state legislatures — in violation, even defiance, of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — the cause for securing our consent becomes even more critical.

It is up to us to secure it.

That the Supreme Court just agreed with states that allow ballots to arrive after Election Day, by using a fungible Election Day “post-mark,” is a blow to election-security efforts to standardize a nationwide process for mail-in ballots.

The fight to improve this goes on.

This is the shared mission of EPEC Team and many coalitions with which we align our efforts, as well as supporters, partners, donors, volunteers, advisors, and directors.

All give of their time, their skills, and treasure to a cause of securing our consent that only grows more critical in this digital era.

Together, we call out and fix corrupted election systems. We celebrate improvements and best practices, too. EPEC Team has played a role in many improvements since we began this journey as a nonprofit devoted to voter participation and education. All because we stay involved in the work.

We also recognize that many citizens have withdrawn from participation over their frustration with political leaders’ lack of interest in securing our elections with requirements as basic as proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote.

We understand the frustration.

Americans are required to show ID and prove legal presence (yes, their citizenship) in practically every sphere of life – work, travel, driving privileges, securing government benefits; yet we see political activists and partisans fighting to thwart citizenship verification for voter registration and proof of identity.

Washington’s Warning

In his farewell address as he left office as our first president, George Washington warned of factionalism that a political party system could bring to America.

Rejecting a third term in office, wary of any monarchical overtones in the new republic, Washington urged Americans to subordinate “sectional jealousies to common national interests,” and to guard against the “strife of political factions” to preserve “religion and morality as the great pillars of human happiness.”

Today, that’s what we have, an adversarial system of elections that must be observed, and checked. That’s why we want to bring back into these efforts any citizens who may have “checked out.”

It is up to us, as citizens of the republic, to stay engaged in the oversight, trust and verification of election systems. It needs everyday Americans to be a part of it, and it must be a year-round effort.

If the balloting process is the conduit of our consent, the way we ensure that this unique experiment in self-government “of the people, by the people, for the people” shall not perish from this earth, as Abraham Lincoln noted in his Gettysburg Address to commemorate the Civil War dead, then we must see all of the evidence and verify.

That means confirming that voter lists are maintained to accuracy, that election systems are secure for casting ballots, and election departments are maintaining neutrality, even checking any rogue actors and processes that distort lawful balloting.

We will keep at it, because our citizenship in this great republic is worth the work. We thank our many partners in this journey.

May you, family, and friends enjoy the celebrations of the amazing freedoms we enjoy and are committed to preserving.

From EPEC Team: Happy 250^th Anniversary, America!

That’s EPEC Team’s initial response to the opinion that agreed with Mississippi’s (Covid-era) statute, which allows ballots postmarked on Election Day to be received five days later. Other states allow ballots to arrive for even longer stretches of time, such as California, which has become notorious for questionable election results.

The sole question in the case was whether counting ballots postmarked by election day, “but received up to five days later, violates the federal election-day statutes,” wrote Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The majority opinion, including Chief Justice John Roberts, said it did not.

Barrett’s lengthy review of election statutes included Civil War-era absentee balloting practices to accommodate soldiers in the field. The majority opinion also leaned in on the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) in its ruling.

“UOCAVA confirms that while Congress has set the date by which absentee ballots must be cast, States have the power to set the date by which they must be received,” Barrett wrote.

She noted that roughly 30 states count military and overseas voters’ absentee ballots that arrive after election day. She did not observe that many states allow UOCAVA ballots after the deadline to receive them, under varying interpretations of the statute.

Since the ruling is a narrow interpretation of a federal election statute, not grounded in constitutional challenges, other cases could find their way before the court.

Given the ruling’s somewhat marginal examples to support the decision, it’s difficult to discern what limiting principles are left on post-Election Day mail-in ballots, especially in states that allow them to trickle in for weeks after Election Day. It also leaves open other challenges about what constitutes a post mark these days.

The decision solidifies the Postal Service as an actor in deciding elections at a time when it no longer confirms when handled mail is actually post-marked.

Anyone who has worked with a post-marking device in a mail room knows that post marks can be back-dated. The decision raises the stakes for the U.S.P.S. to confirm whether a mail-in ballot has been properly postmarked on or by election day.

“The ruling has profound implications for U.S. election integrity, trusted results, and voter-list accuracy,” said Jon Lareau, Executive Director of EPEC, in a statement.

Justice Samuel Alito, leading the dissent, wrote that the decision “leaves open opportunities for voter fraud that may further undermine Americans’ faith in the integrity of this country’s elections. Diverse sources have recognized that mail-in ballots increase the potential for fraud.”

The ruling is likely to create even more pressure on the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which allows mail-in ballots to those who are not able to vote in person. The bill includes provisions for mail-in ballots that protect overseas voters under UOCAVA.

Election security law firm Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) had urged the court to hold that federal law requires mail ballots to be received by Election Day. In a statement, the firm called on remaining states to amend their laws to set Election Day as a return deadline.

“This is something the American people broadly support, and will promote confidence in our elections process and ensure timely election results,” RITE added.

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, whose original litigation helped bring the case to the Supreme Court, said the decision “threatens to make a mess for our nation’s already stressed federal elections.”

Justice Alito’s dissent added:

“Today’s decision is inconsistent with the terms of the election-day statutes, contemporary election-law principles, two centuries of historical practice, and the case law on the question presented. It opens up and fails to resolve a host of questions for state election officials and courts. And it creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”

Virginia’s Department of Elections generally has allowed mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received by noon on the following Friday (with an extension to Monday if Friday is a holiday). #

In other decisions coming out of the Supreme Court, it announced it would take up a challenge to policies that allow noncitizens to stay on voter rolls prior to an election. A controversial interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “quiet period” rule to prohibit the removal of illegal registrations (never eligible in the first place), has also spread to Virginia. #

By Jon Lareau

• We have updated our previous analysis of noncitizens on Virginia’s voter rolls with a voting history.

• The Commonwealth’s new policy is that declared noncitizens are not to be removed from voter rolls for 90 days prior to primary and midterm elections.

Abstract:

Using data provided by the VA Department of Elections (“ELECT”), we have identified at least 8,566 unique registrations that were self-identified as “Declared NonCitizen” and removed from the voter rolls since May of 2023.

Of those 8,566 removals of self-declared noncitizens — which Virginia’s constitution prohibits from registering and voting, we see 1,756 registrations with a corresponding record of ballots cast, according to the statewide Voter History List (VHL) record.

As of February of 2019, that brings the number of ballots cast by declared noncitizens to 6,111, according to official records. Those are the records we know about.

In addition, the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data of Virginia’s 45-day early voting period shows an additional ten (10) noncitizen registrations and ballots — none of which are found in the Voter History List (VHL), the final tally of who voted.

Therefore, we see 6,121 illegal ballots cast by self-identified noncitizens, from 1,766 registrants who were removed from the voting rolls after self-declaring themselves as ineligible noncitizens. That’s according to the official Voter History List (VHL) and early voting data found in the Daily Absentee List (DAL) reports.

Voting as an ineligible individual is a Class 6 felony voting violation in Virginia.

Background on Non-Removal Policy:

After our initial post on this topic in March 2024, we submitted all of the relevant information for investigation to then-Attorney General, Jayson Miyares (R).

We did not hear back, nor did we receive any response or update on the matter. We are not aware of any action by the AG’s office on these apparent violations since 2024.

At the time in 2024, the Arlington County Electoral Board undertook its own investigation and voted 3-0 to send the information to the AG’s office as well. Fairfax County’s Electoral Board also issued a new policy on referring noncitizens with voting records to the Commonwealth Attorney. The policy stated:

“The General Registrar shall refer all individuals who were removed from the voter rolls pursuant to Va. Code § 24.2-427(C), after being identified by ELECT as noncitizens, to the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the Attorney General to determine if they have violated Virginia elections law.”

In October 2024, during early voting for the presidential election, the League of Women Voters along with the Biden Department of Justice sued VA, asking for an injunction to place approximately 1,600 removed noncitizen registrations back on the voter rolls. After two lower courts granted the injunction, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the case, and the noncitizen removals proceeded as the litigation played out.

It is EPEC’s opinion that the Commonwealth of VA was correctly applying the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in this matter under the Youngkin administration and AG Miyares, as I detailed in an X.com post on Oct 12.

In 2025, the incoming Trump DOJ dropped the Biden DOJ’s lawsuit against VA; the League of Women Voters continued the litigation.

In April of 2026, Virginia’s Democrat Attorney General Jay Jones issued an advisory opinion to the Department of Elections that effectively adopts the same position of the challengers in the Biden DOJ / LWV lawsuit.

ELECT followed this advisory opinion with guidance to registrars instructing them not to remove any noncitizen voters within the NVRA’s 90-day “quiet period” around any federal election, including primaries.

As of May 6th 2026, ELECT is no longer populating noncitizen data into “hoppers” that are used to notify Commonwealth registrars of tasks that require their action.

Instead, ELECT has instructed registrars to change the categorization of existing flagged items in the hopper from “notify voter” to “needs research.”

Fairfax County’s Board of Elections has also apparently moved off its referral policy regarding noncitizens with voting records (as reported in its February 2026 Electoral Board meeting).

See Jones’ April 16, 2026 letter to VA Commissioner of Elections Steven Koski here.

See ELECT’s April 30, 2026 guidance document here.

We believe this interpretation is impacting the number of self-identified noncitizens that are removed and reflected in the Monthly Update Service (MUS). We have already seen an order of magnitude difference in the data since June 1, 2026, which covers the May time-period in the new policy.

Voter-List Maintenance Obligations:

As part of its responsibilities under law, the VA Department of Elections is required to identify and remove invalid or out-of-date registration records from the voter rolls.

One situation for removal is when a registrant has been determined (via self identification) to be a noncitizen. The VA Constitution prohibits noncitizens from voting in VA elections.

“In elections by the people, the qualifications of voters shall be as follows: Each voter shall be a citizen of the United States, shall be eighteen years of age, shall fulfill the residence requirements set forth in this section, and shall be registered to vote pursuant to this article. …” VA Constitution, Article II, Section 1. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article2/section1/

Additionally, according to VA Code Section 24.2-1004, the act of knowingly casting a ballot by someone who is not eligible to vote is a Class 6 felony.

EPEC’s Analysis Methodology:

ELECT makes available for purchase by qualifying parties various data sets, including the registered voter list (RVL) and the Voter History List (VHL).

Additionally, ELECT provides a Monthly Update Service (MUS) subscription that contains (almost) all of the Voter List changes and transactions for the previous period.

The MUS datasets carry an “NVRAReasonCode” field that is associated with each transaction that gives the reason for the update or change in the voter record. This is in accordance with disclosure and transparency requirements in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

One of the reason codes for records that are removed is “Declared Non-Citizen.”

EPEC has been purchasing and archiving these official records as part of our nonprofit mission to document and educate the public about elections processes, and drive voter participation.

EPEC looked at the number of records associated with unique voter identification numbers identified for removal from the voter record due to non-citizenship status, per entries in the monthly updates (MUS).

We correlated those results with our accumulated Voter History List (VHL) information to determine whether noncitizen registrations had corresponding records of ballots cast in previous elections.

We only considered those records that are currently in a non-active state as of the latest MUS transaction log. Some determinations of non-citizenship status in the historical MUS transaction log might have been due to error and subsequently corrected and reinstated to active status.

Important to note: We are not considering those records that had a “Declared Non-Citizen” disqualification, but were subsequently reinstated and reactivated by ELECT.

Other Gaps to Note:

While EPEC has periodically purchased full copies of the Voter History List for our archives, there is a known issue with the way ELECT handles removals from the voter record that can cause sampling issues — depending on the time the VHL file is purchased. The result: Records of some legitimately cast ballots can be missing from the VHL due to this policy.

Namely, when ELECT removes an ineligible voter from the voter list, it also removes all instances of that registration’s voter ID from its voter history information and other data files that it provides to qualified organizations. (In my opinion, that process eliminates important voting information and thus is not a good way to manage the data, but that is the way it is done).

In light of that, EPEC also used its archived versions of the Daily Absentee List (DAL) early voting files to check records of ballots cast that might otherwise be eliminated from the VHL.

Results:

We observe 8,566 unique voter records marked for removal with the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen” and not subsequently reinstated in the accumulated MUS record since EPEC began collecting the data in mid-2023, which covers 2019.

Of those 8,566 removals, there were 1,756 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 6,111 associated ballots cast since Feb of 2019. Figure 1 below shows the distribution of noncitizen voters in the cumulative MUS file history.

The blue trace represent the total identified and CANCELED noncitizen registrations, and the yellow trace represents the number of those records that also had corresponding records (at least 1) in the accumulated voter history data.

Note that the data contained in the monthly (MUS) updates often covers more than a single month’s period. In other words, the monthly MUS files are over-sampled.

Subsequent MUS reports can contain repeated entries from previous months, as their data may overlap. Our analysis used the first unique entry for a given voter ID marked as “Declared Non-Citizen” in the cumulative MUS record, that had not been subsequently reinstated, in order to build Figure 1 (above).

This data oversampling in the MUS may help explain the relative spike in the first (May 2023) bin compared to subsequent months in the chart above.

As VHL information can be incomplete depending on the time the VHL data was purchased in relation to the time that registrants were removed from voter records, EPEC also checked these noncitizen removals against the archived history of Daily Absentee List (DAL) early voting files that EPEC has accumulated.

There were an additional ten (10) noncitizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data that were not contained in the Voter History data.

The total number of identified noncitizen ballots cast is therefore 6,121 by 1,766 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.

These identifications represent only the individuals who declared themselves as noncitizens through official interactions with ELECT, DMV, or other agencies.

Each registrant is contacted by the registrar to confirm their noncitizen status prior to removal, as is the current policy. (Again … we are only considering those records that we’re flagged as “Declared Non-Citizen”, removed and never reinstated.)

The distribution of identified unique voter ID’s for the 1,756 identified noncitizen voters per VA locality is given below.

It should be noted that each ballot record has a specific locality associated with it stating where the ballot was cast, whereas unique individuals might move between localities over time.

The assignment of unique identified individuals to each locality is therefore based on the locality listed in the specific MUS “Declared Non-Citizen” record for that individual, while the assignment of ballot cast to Localities is based on the individual VHL/DAL records.

For example, an individual could have lived and voted multiple times in one locality, then moved to another locality and voted again — before being determined as a noncitizen. The same person would have generated multiple VHL/DAL records for each ballot cast, associated with potentially different localities.

(See a PDF of All Localities here, sorted by most removals.)

Discussion

Of particular concern is that we can see a significant order of magnitude (10 x) drop in the number of reported noncitizen removals in the MUS data covering May 2026.

This coincides with the recent aforementioned opinion letter from AG Jones (D) to the Department of Elections that advised ELECT NOT to remove self-identified noncitizens from the rolls.

The previous AG (Miyares) made the case that all of these removals were initiated by individual actions of self-identification via interactions with DMV or the Courts, which means they were “individualized” removals in accordance with NVRA.

AG Jones has now taken the opposite stance of Miyares, and is now effectively granting the relief that the DOJ & LWV were requesting in their suit by allowing self-declared noncitizens to remain on the rolls for 90 days prior to federal elections.

This explains the order of magnitude decrease in the number of noncitizen removals that we observe in the MUS data.

Another point of concern: Even though we see a decrease in the removal rate per the policy changes above, we see a significant increase in the number of ballots associated with noncitizen records compared to our previous documented trends.

The table below summarizes all of our previous posts on the subject. The cumulative number of identified noncitizen removals has increased by 1,233 since our last report, the number of associated ballots cast has increased overall by 2,596 (nearly double).

This equates to an average number of identified associated ballots cast per removed noncitizen of 0.713, while all other previous analyses had averages between 0.35 and 0.566.

Below is another streamlined view of the data. See full PDF here.

It is important to note that the records identified in the MUS are only those resulting from individuals who were removed after self-identifying as a noncitizen via interactions with DMV, ELECT, or other official avenues.

The data presented here specifically excludes those individuals that were subsequently reinstated onto the voter rolls.

The fact that a small number of identified noncitizen registrations are also associated with illegally cast ballots raises questions that citizens should be asking — and discussing with their legislators and government officials.

Each act of noncitizen voting is a de-facto disenfranchisement of legal voters’ rights, and is a punishable offense under VA law.

Additionally, this evidence which is derived from only official state records, directly contradicts multiple news media reports and attestations that noncitizen voting is a “Myth,” and that noncitizen voting happens “almost never.”

If the datasets from ELECT are accurate, at least 6,111 ballots have been cast by noncitizen voters just since 2019, as reflected in voting history records from 2023.

It is a legitimate concern; these discoveries are only the registrations found and removed from the voter roles by ELECT and that we can observe in the data.

It should also be reiterated that these are only the records that we can observe given our data repository, and how often we can realistically purchase and acquire voter history and voter registration information.

When a registration is canceled as ineligible, the individual’s voter history is also deleted. It is therefore likely that this analysis represents a significant undercount of the occurrences of noncitizen voters.

Additionally, we know that the MUS data does not entirely encompass all transactions performed on the RVL, so there may be other, unknown transactions we are missing.

We do not know how many exist if we don’t know about them.

With recent changes in guidance from the new AG Jones to ELECT, we expect our ability to observe and report on these issues will be significantly impacted.

Because ELECT will stop removals of many of these records, they will not show up in the MUS records, even though they have been correctly flagged via self-identification as ineligible to register or vote.

In effect, individuals who attest they are noncitizens and ineligible to vote will remain on Virginia’s voter lists prior to its primary and midterm elections.

(See prior analysis of noncitizen removals and voting history here: March 2024, July 2024, Sept 2024, Oct 2024, Nov 2024, Dec 2024, March 2025, August 2025, and Jan 2026 posts.)

Jon Lareau volunteers as Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer of EPEC, which he helped found in 2022. This post is republished from his DigitalPollWatchers.org blog.

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As Senior Data Analyst for Electoral Process Education Corporation (EPEC Team), I recently analyzed Virginia’s Registered Voter List (RVL) after we noticed a higher-than-usual number of registrations using the same address.

We found the appearance of blank spaces in the address fields of many of these addresses in the RVL — out of hundreds of thousands of registrations with blank spaces in address lines (as of May 16, 2026).

This may be explainable, but it is also a problem with no rational explanation for data quality. General Registrars need to treat these as security weaknesses in voter lists to be addressed in their maintenance duties.

Why does this matter?

When we audit data, we look for patterns. For example, if bad actors were intent upon manipulating a voter list to create faulty or duplicate registrations, one method would be to insert virtually undetectable “errors” into the data set during the process of filling out registration fields in an online portal.

The “inserted errors” with empty spaces might serve two purposes.

One: Blank spaces create opportunities to extract a voter registration by using those extra character spaces as a kind of filtering device. A third party could manipulate them into something else in the voter registration records. Empty spaces can be used to bank defective registrations, which can be extracted and changed by filtering “empty characters” in the dataset.

Two: Empty spaces in address fields are difficult for General Registrars to detect during the intake process. The introduction of blank spaces in certain required fields in the record can prevent GRs from validating whether voter registration records are being altered later on.

This is an important issue in Virginia, given that we see last-character errors in the address lines of 315,251 voter registration records (as of May 16, 2026).

That represents nearly 5% of Virginia’s 6.4 million registrations which contain errors in address lines that could be prone to manipulation (such as duplication).

Of those 315,251 entries with last-character errors, we also see 8,126 records missing the entire “Address Line 1” fields. These may be what are known as “protected voters” whose status allows them to keep their residency address from public data for security. We filtered those records out of our analysis. (See chart below of totals.)

We observed these registrations with empty spaces (extra character spaces) while analyzing a higher-than-usual number of registrations that are using the same address.

Bottom line: Empty spaces, or blank characters that are left in the address fields of a registered voter record may look like innocent mistakes in data entry -- but are ripe for exploitation. They can be used to manipulate voter records and generate fraudulent ballot requests, for example.

Analysis Methodology

My analysis began by reviewing higher-than-normal registrations using the same address (outside of apartment buildings that share a same street address, for example).

After generating a table with total voters, using the “Address Line” field, I noticed multiple instances of the same entries that suggested a large number of voters at a specific address.

Using a “Trim” command, a data-analysis formula to remove all excess spaces within a data string, we still found duplicate “Address Line 1” entries in the records.

I then used another data-analysis filtering method known as the “RIGHT” command, which returns the last character (or characters in a text string), based on the number of characters specified, to extract those “blank spaces.”

With that filter, we found 244,411 records in the RVL with last-character errors in the “Mailing Address Line 1” field.

None of these should be Null (an empty or blank field), and none of the 244,081 entries with an added blank space (or two) at the end of the field entry should have the extra character at the end of the field. This creates opportunities for manipulation.

Again, why does this matter?

Last character “errors” in a registration record’s “Address Line 1” entry make it harder to detect potentially fraudulent registrations. In this example, blank spaces could be used to manipulate address fields and request an estimated 50,000 questionable mail-in ballots.

What is the solution?

General Registrars need to work with database administrators to correct errors that create opportunities for manipulating address fields in registration records.

EPEC Team is happy to help point out these issues that need to be corrected. These types of errors are also the source of voter-record challenges that citizens have pointed out for years with General Registrars.

After July 1^st, this all changes when a new law goes into effect. HB 640 targets citizens’ rights to challenge whether registrars are doing enough to update incomplete registrations or errors on rolls, often the source of eligibility challenges.

The new law eliminates the process by which any three voters could challenge a voter’s registration before the general registrar; such challenges may still be made by filing a petition with the circuit court of the county or city where the voter is registered.

The new law gives GRs a pass from even listening to their localities’ citizens about whether voter lists are accurate and contain required, material information.

Instead, citizens must go through the courts, adding a significant cost burden to their right to ensure voter records are being maintained accurately under federal and state statutes.

EPEC Team is looking into how the challenge process would unfold in local district courts. It appears that circuit courts are figuring out the new law, too.

We are delving into these issues this month, guided by an Election Bill Tracker list compiled by election experts Andi Bayer and Susan Hogge.

Working with citizen groups, they spent months following Virginia General Assembly debate and passage of the bills. They compiled the information into an easy-to-understand spreadsheet that is available to download — and will be updating the information on regular intervals as a service to the Commonwealth.

Download the Spreadsheet Here

EPEC Team and its partners are committed to raising the public’s knowledge of the these laws. We urge readers to download the tracker and understand their impact. #

Why are so many voter registration records in Virginia in violation of the Commonwealth’s statute governing them?

EPEC Team’s Senior Data Analyst Rick Naigle has found, on Virginia’s official Registered Voter List (RVL), close to a half-million voter registrations with no middle name, missing genders, even missing first and last names as required.

The answer can be traced to administrative law from agencies that effectively dilute the original statute’s intent, using lax standards built around the vague use of “reasonable” in voter-list maintenance requirements.

Congress helped create these conditions. By not defining what “reasonable” actually means in Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) (“Motor Voter”), vague and inconsistent standards wend their way into statewide interpretations.

Take Virginia statute 24.2-418, which governs registration applications. The law is clear about the requirements.

The statute says:

The form of the application to register shall require the applicant to provide the following information: full name; gender; date of birth; social security number, if any; whether the applicant is presently a United States citizen; address of residence in the precinct; place of last previous registration to vote; and whether the applicant has ever been adjudicated incapacitated and disqualified to vote or convicted of a felony, and if so, whether the applicant’s right to vote has been restored.

Then comes VA administrative code, a kind of unaccountable law-making by executive branch agencies, which “interpret” the intent of laws passed by the elected assembly, often with strategic uses of “may” (optional) and “shall” (required).

For example, Virginia’s administrative code covering the voter registration statute, “1VAC20-40-70”, says the registrant’s middle name “may be material” to determining eligibility to vote.

It continues: If the applicant does not include a middle name and does not check the box indicating none, the administrative code says the registrar “shall” make an effort to find out if the registrant has a middle name. However, if they are not successful in this effort, it’s effectively a shrug. The general registrar “shall” register anyway.

The net result: 487,000 registrations on Virginia’s voter rolls with no middle name on file — despite a law requiring “full legal names” on voter registrations. The administrative code creates wildly inconsistent records of a key identity marker: the middle name. It is ripe for challenge.

Naigle also sees over 31,000 voter registration records where the required gender is listed as either “U” or “X” as well as “M” or “F.” The statute says gender is material to a completed application to register. The administrative code says it is not.

In the era of big data and growth of machine learning algorithms in software systems, administrative codes such as these are moving in the wrong direction. They effectively create lax standards on record-keeping, and opportunities for manipulation, such as duplication of registrations using slight name variations — all while ignoring modern day tools that can easily update records.

No one appears to be doing anything about the potential for manipulation.

The Senate has not allowed further debate on the SAVE America Act, an overdue update of the decades-old NVRA that brings voter-roll maintenance into the 21st century, in addition to requiring proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote.

According to Naigle, over 500,000 registrations overall are showing defects in material information on registrations, which is about 8.5% (1 in 13) of Virginia’s ~6.4 million registered voters.

From a data quality standpoint, this represents a scale of error that can become a vector for intentional manipulation of voter registrations by determined harvesters.

Enter a new election law in Virginia as of July 1st, (HB 640), that will curtail citizens’ rights to challenge whether registrars are doing enough to update incomplete rolls.

The new law eliminates the process by which any voter could challenge, in a polling place on the day of an election, the right of any other voter to cast a ballot.

The bill also eliminates the process by which any three voters could challenge a voter's registration before the general registrar; such challenges may still be made by filing a petition with the circuit court of the county or city where the voter is registered.

The law gives GRs a pass from even listening to their localities’ citizens about whether voter lists are accurate and contain required, material information.

HB 640 is among a flurry of new laws that EPEC Team is spotlighting this month.

Many of them are among troubling trends in trusted elections: crazy-quilt NVRA interpretations of “reasonable” maintenance efforts, all while allowing required fields under the NVRA, such as month and date of birth of the registrant, to be hidden from citizen oversight of voter rolls.

A filing by the Dept. of Justice, which asked the Supreme Court to review an NVRA case involving Arizona, is yet another example of why it needs review.

Thanks to unclear rulings about the NVRA’s 90-day rule that prohibits “systemic” purges from voter rolls three months before an election, many states use that rule to allow noncitizens — ineligible to register in the first place — to remain on voter rolls.

“The DOJ made its argument on May 26 in a brief urging the high court to grant the petition in the case of Republican National Committee (RNC) v. Mi Familia Vota,” Zero Hedge noted of Arizona, where two laws now govern the state’s elections.

The DOJ argues in its brief that the NVRA’s restrictions on taking individuals’ names off the list of eligible voters in the 90 days preceding an election “do not apply to noncitizens who were never eligible to register in the first place.”

The motion for review refers to a prior ruling by the Ninth Circuit as “badly mistaken,” which deepens a split among federal courts of appeals, and “risks significant harm,” said Hashim Mooppan, filing as acting solicitor general.

Using the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit, “a State could never remove a noncitizen from its voter rolls once registered,” he said. “That cannot be correct and cries out for reversal,” Mooppan said, urging the Supreme Court to grant the RNC’s petition.

EPEC Team is delving into these issues all this month, guided by an Election Bill Tracker list compiled by election experts Andi Bayer and Susan Hogge.

Working with citizen groups, they spent months following Virginia General Assembly debate and passage of the bills. They compiled the information into an easy-to-understand spreadsheet that is available to download — and will be updating the information on regular intervals as a service to the Commonwealth.

Download the Spreadsheet Here

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of voter registrations that are incomplete and out of compliance with the intent of registration statutes in Virginia, EPEC Team believes that HB 640 — as well as existing administrative codes on voter-registration statutes — are ripe for legal challenge.

EPEC Team and its partners are committed to raising the public’s knowledge of the these laws. We urge readers to download the tracker and understand their impact. #

—Judge Declines to Stop EO on Ballot Security; Postal Service Begins Rule-Making

—Virginians’ Vanishing Right to Challenge Illegal Voters

—Download a New Tool to Track Virginia’s Controversial Election Laws

Election security groups say they are heartened to see a Washington, D.C., district judge decline to block President Trump’s March 31 Executive Order that requires the United States Post Office to enhance mail-in ballot security.

Judge Carl Nichols’ order is a win for the security-related measures in the EO, entitled: “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”

Within days of the March 31 EO, Democrat senators and aligned activist groups rushed into court asking for an injunction, claiming theories about harm and that it was likely unconstitutional.

The judge denied their motion, ruling they failed to show they could succeed on the merits, and that plaintiffs have not suffered any harm at present, much less harm that is “certain,” “great,” and “imminent.”

“Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present,” Judge Carl Nichols wrote in the May 28 ruling.

See the ruling here.

This is huge, said Cleta Mitchell of the Election Integrity Network, during an appearance on the Warroom Podcast Friday. “This judge applied the same rules of standing that are never applied to left-wing groups.”

It is important to point out, Mitchell added, that election mail is a special kind of mail to the U.S.P.S.

The EO orders the U.S.P.S. to promote regulations that ensure the mail-in ballots are delivered according to statutes that govern the federal postal service. This ensures they are not delivered to commercial addresses, abandoned warehouses, or other addresses prohibited from receiving mail-in ballots.

The March 31 EO provides actions that the U.S. Postal Service can take to assure mail-in ballots are transiting with secure tracking codes as required by federal statute.

The EO also directs agencies such as the Social Security Administration (SSA), in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, to help states verify identity and federal election voter eligibility by providing them lists of eligible voters.

More challenges to the EO are underway; for now, the judge’s ruling frees up the U.S.P.S. to start rule-making to ensure that mail-in ballots are secured.

It got the ball rolling today by proposing new rules “that would require states to provide voter-level data on mail-in ballots in federal elections, one day after a federal judge declined to immediately block President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening mail-in voting rules,” as CNBC reported.

It directs the federal postal service to launch mail envelope design reviews to help states comply with U.S.P.S. mailing standards, including barcode placement.

It also promotes a rule that would establish a process by which:

(1) states (including authorized election officials and their mail service providers) will notify the Postal Service of the individuals to whom they are mailing a mail-in or absentee ballot, along with the unique barcode applied to the outbound and return ballot mail envelope for such individuals such that the name and barcode of the voter will be included on a Mail-In and Absentee Participation List;

(2) states (including authorized election officials and their mail service providers) may thereafter add to or modify the list of enrollees until the last day that ballots may be mailed out to individuals under state law;

(3) the Postal Service will provide to each state’s chief election official a final State-Specific Mail-In and Absentee Participation List for each state compiling the names of all enrolled individuals in such state, along with the barcodes associated with such individuals’ mail-in or absentee ballots.

More in our next report. The U.S.P.S. rule-making notice is here. #

Virginians’ Vanishing Right to Challenge Illegal Voters

While Virginians were dealing with a rushed referendum in March and April on redistricting — which the VA Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional — the governor was signing a flurry of controversial election bills into law.

Chief among them is HB 640. As of July, it eliminates the process by which any voter could challenge, in a polling place on the day of an election, the right of any other voter to cast a ballot. As of July 1st, anyone who makes good-faith challenges to an elector will have to go to a Richmond court, and hire lawyers.

The impact emboldens unlawful balloting by removing a long-standing right in election laws that allow citizens to challenge whether their votes are being diluted by an illegal or ineligible elector.

Left-wing groups have targeted the long-standing process of challenging a voter’s eligibility by accusing any good-faith challenge to Jim Crow-era abuses that the Voting Rights Act abolishes. Their narrative is that voter fraud is “exceedingly” rare, while ignoring the growing cases of fraudulent balloting, and noncitizens with voting histories.

(See EPEC Team’s documentation of the more than 7,000 Virginia noncitizens who “self-identified” as ineligible to be on the voter rolls in the past three years. Before they were removed from the rolls, thousands racked up a history of felony voting violations that disenfranchised Virginia voters.)

EPEC Team Voter News

Latest List of Noncitizens Who Vote in VA

By Jonathan Lareau, volunteer Chief Technology Officer, EPEC Team…

Read more

7 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment

Today, with noncitizens automatically flowing from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles’ system onto voter rolls in 19 states, the new Virginia law (HB 640) further curtails citizens’ rights to question whether a voter is eligible to cast a ballot. By removing deterrence measures, the law creates conditions that embolden election fraud — while eroding citizens’ right to be a part of their election process.

To find out more about the new laws that impact our elections and how elections are managed, EPEC Team encourages readers to download an Election Bill Tracker that was curated by the election security group Virginia Fair Elections.

Election experts Andi Bayer and Susan Hogge spent months following the Virginia Assembly’s debate and passage of the bills. They compiled the information into an easy-to-understand spreadsheet that is available to download, and will be updating the information on regular intervals as a service to the Commonwealth.

Download the Spreadsheet Here

The tracker list and new bills arrive amid a growing list of inconsistent appellate court rulings about the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — which states, including Virginia, are using to block or redefine what are “reasonable” voter-list activities.

Inconsistent and even distorted interpretations of the NVRA are also leading to a troubling trend: voter-roll information that is increasingly opaque to citizen oversight, while dual standards of voter-roll maintenance proliferate among states.

A filing by the Dept. of Justice, which asked the Supreme Court to review an NVRA case involving Arizona, is one among many examples. Thanks to unclear rulings about the 90-day “safe harbor” rule, many states allow noncitizens to remain on the voter rolls leading up to elections. In Arizona, two laws now govern the state’s elections.

“The DOJ made its argument on May 26 in a brief urging the high court to grant the petition in the case of Republican National Committee (RNC) v. Mi Familia Vota,” Zero Hedge noted.

The DOJ argues in its brief that the NVRA’s restrictions on taking individuals’ names off the list of eligible voters in the 90 days preceding an election “do not apply to noncitizens who were never eligible to register in the first place.

The motion for review refers to a prior ruling by the Ninth Circuit as “badly mistaken,” which deepens a split among federal courts of appeals, and “risks significant harm,” said Hashim Mooppan, filing as acting solicitor general.

Using the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit, “a State could never remove a noncitizen from its voter rolls once registered,” he said. “That cannot be correct and cries out for reversal,” Mooppan said, urging the Supreme Court to grant the RNC’s petition.

Inconsistent rulings by courts regarding the NVRA have also been used to curtail transparency in voter rolls that are supposed to be made public, such as withholding the month and date of a voter’s birthday as part of their registration.

The overall trend is that courts are allowing voter-list maintenance records, which are critical to public trust in elections, to become the sole province of state election officials — without any oversight, not even by the DOJ, as some courts have ruled.

EPEC Team and its partners are committed to raising the public’s knowledge of the impact of these Virginia laws and how they related to national trends. We urge readers to download the tracker to understand the impact of trusted elections. More in coming reports. #

Updates last version to correct reference to HB 640.

Amid today’s ceremonies, flags flown at half-staff from sunrise to noon, sacred rituals to their valor, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the sound of taps in the air, EPEC Team joins in remembering their devotion, including Gold Star families who carry on.

May their service and sacrifice never be forgotten, and fortify our commitment to liberty as well as our mission of free, fair, and trusted elections.

And may they rest in peace. #

As a result, VA Assembly Democrats will not be able to draw new congressional maps from the current 6-5 (D-R) configuration to the 10-1 (D-R) map proposals.

The Friday ruling by the Supreme Court of Virginia is a huge win in the redistricting wars for Republican lawmakers who filed multiple legal challenges amid Democrats’ rush to send a constitutional referendum to the voters ahead of the midterm elections.

The high court agreed. The ruling is here.

“You cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” said VA Sen. Ryan McDougle, one of the plaintiffs.

In a statement, Attorney General Jay Jones claimed the court’s ruling was partisan and “put politics over the rule of law by issuing a ruling that overturns the April 21st special election on redistricting.”

However, attorneys representing the Commonwealth before SCOVA on April 27th admitted that the vote results had no bearing on the legal issues that were raised before the Special Election started.

The decision affirmed that.

On the issues before us in this case, we hold that the ultimate vote margin plays no role in the analytics of our judicial review of the constitutionality of the pre-election constitutional amendment process.

More than one million Virginians had cast a ballot during early voting in 2025 when the Democrat-majority assembly passed the first of its constitutional referendum bills; they claimed it was still an “intervening” election per the requirements for changing the constitution because it happened before Election Day, April 21.

It was a key point in the legal challenges. The high court took issue with their argument that early voting really didn’t count as an election.

The opinion added:

With that perspective, imagine one of the over one million Virginians who had voted in person before Election Day in 2025 walking into a polling place. The voter says to the officer of election, “I am here to vote in the election.” The officer of election responds, “we are not conducting an election here.” “But that’s why I am here,” the voter replies. “Maybe so, but let me explain,” the officer of election insists, “you can vote in the election, but we are not conducting an election today. Elections are only conducted on Election Day.

Reaction:

“The Virginia Supreme Court just cooked ‘the Lobster,’ and with it, the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment,” wrote Jonathan Turley, who teaches law at George Washington University Law School.

“All is left is a lingering sense of betrayal by GOP and independent voters who faced erasure from the gerrymander.”

Turley was referring to the proposed map’s Congressional District 7, which became notorious for its extreme gerrymander in the shape of a lobster, with Fairfax County populations as the tail.

The ruling means Republicans hang on to four seats in the redistricting wars that have intensified with Democrats since the Supreme Court’s landmark 6-3 decision to strike down racially drawn congressional districts and narrow the reading of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

At least two of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts are still deploying the VRA to draw congressional districts by race, which the Supreme Court has ruled is unconstitutional discrimination.

It is highly likely Virginia will be facing more litigation in the near future to address those maps as groups and even the Dept. of Justice look at the next steps.

Southern states are already preparing to re-draw congressional maps. The Tennessee legislature just redrew a racially gerrymandered seat to give Republicans a likely 9-0 seat advantage.

In all Republicans are looking to pick up maybe 14-16 congressional seats from redistricting while Democrats are looking to re-draw maps that have already been gerrymandered in the extreme.

In Virginia’s case, the high court stood by the strict requirements of the Commonwealth’s constitution — and its own role in the 2021 congressional maps — when it ruled the Democrats had not followed them in their rush to redistrict.

Thomas McCarthy, one of the attorneys for the Republican challengers, appeared to score key points with the VA high court during oral arguments when he pointed out that the assembly Democrats passed a constitutional referendum using a Special Session that began in 2024, in the middle of 2025 election early voting, without sufficient 90-day notice.

“It is not how the process is supposed to work,” he added.

“It is the people, the people of the Commonwealth – the voters — who possess the power to amend or modify the constitution,” he told the justices. “And denying them the knowledge that this proposed amendment was coming through, should undermine the whole process.”

#

Will the whole thing be thrown out as a lower court has already ruled?

That’s the speculation among legal and even political observers after SCOVA’s one-sentence order Tuesday denying the Attorney General’s motion to move ahead with new congressional maps while the high court reviews multiple legal challenges.

SCOVA’s brief order would mean that Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley’s April 22nd ruling, which halted certification of the election and declared it void, stays while the state high court reviews constitutional challenges from 2025 and 2026.

Former House Delegate and attorney Tim Anderson wrote:

“On a scale of 1-10 (1 being very bad and 10 being very good) - I would rate this at a 187. The Democrats cannot draw maps until the vote has been certified. By allowing the results to be blocked - the Dems are dead in the water until the court rules otherwise. Certification was supposed to happen this Friday.”

Former VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who also served in the Virginia state Senate, let slip some optimism, too.

“In the 'tea leaves' category, this is as positive a 'tea leaf' as one might imagine!

“If #SCOVA thought they would let the referendum stand, then logically they would have lifted the injunction on counting & certifying the votes. Caveat: this is still just tea leaves, but it's a good sign.”

Cuccinelli said he was a little bit surprised that, during oral arguments before the Supreme Court of VA Monday on the constitutional challenges, most of the questions were from two conservative justices on the seven-seat panel, Stephen R. McCullough and Wesley G. Russell Jr.

It may be that even liberal justices are probably “concerned at the rather brazen nature of the General Assembly’s behavior here” in how they passed the referendum.

One of the justices observed that constitutional amendments can last generations and are not easily reversed in subsequent elections.

You can say a lot of things, Cuccinelli added, but you cannot say the General Assembly “strictly adhered” to Article XII, Sec. 1 requirements in passing the constitutional amendment referendum.

The Special Election vote would allow a 6-5 (D-R) congressional map to be re-drawn to a 10-1 (D-R) gerrymandered map ahead of midterm elections.

Justice Russell asked the Solicitor General for Virginia: does the “yes” vote on the referendum question matter to the legal issues before the court? The answer: no.

Appeals of the April 22nd ruling by Judge Hurley are still reportedly pending after Tuesday’s stay. But those could be moot — if the Supreme Court of Virginia agrees with the arguments already put forth during the April 27 hearing.

By the time the Democrat-majority General Assembly voted on “first passage” of the referendum in October of 2025 during early voting, more than one million voters had already cast a ballot. The 90-day notification rule, after the so-called “second passage” constitutional requirement, ran weeks short of the start of early voting on March 6, 2026. That, too, came up for review during oral arguments Monday.

Thomas McCarthy, one of the attorneys for the Republican challengers, including state Sen. Ryan McDougle, said passing a constitutional referendum using a Special Session that began in 2024, in the middle of 2025 election early voting, without sufficient 90-day notice, is not how the process is supposed to work.

“It is the people, the people of the Commonwealth – the voters — who possess the power to amend or modify the constitution,” he told the justices. “And denying them the knowledge that this proposed amendment was coming through, should undermine the whole process.”

Never in the history of the Commonwealth has a General Assembly passed a constitutional amendment referendum this way, he noted.

The audio of the April 27 hearing before the Supreme Court of VA is here:

(The news comes as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on April 29 to narrow Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which ends racial gerrymandering in states. It may also impact the current 6-5 [D-R] congressional maps in Virginia.)

The pause to the certification of the April 21 Special Election arrives amid a swirl of legal challenges in this rushed election. It has been mired in confusion over the wording of the ballot question, even confusion over the results that EPEC Team has been documenting. More on that in our next report. #

EPEC Team Voter News

Back to Court for VA's Confused Special Election

Virginia’s April 21 Special Election on redistricting is far from settled — even before the Virginia Supreme Court takes up legal challenges to the vote after a Tazewell County Judge ruled that the referendum itself is unconstitutional and void…

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4 months ago · 3 likes · Erin Marie Joyce

The unofficial numbers from the election itself have not been settling in either.

As of Saturday, April 25th, the “yes” votes for whether to allow Assembly Democrats to redraw congressional seats from 6-5 (D-R) to 10-1 (D-R) had increased by a few percentage points to 51.6% of the vote (1.59 million).

The “no” votes in the tally have now decreased by a few percentage points to 48.39% of the vote (1.49 million).

This aligns with data we are tracking that shows early voting totals much lower in the final tallies, according to unofficial data from the Department of Elections.

Compare to results posted Wed. April 22nd:

It may all be moot if the Supreme Court of Virginia agrees with a Tazewell Circuit Court judge who ruled Wednesday that the whole thing was illegal, unconstitutional and void. See the ruling here.

The ballot question itself (whether to “restore fairness” to help Democrats gerrymander a map that wipes out four Republican-held congressional seats) is also on the docket.

Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley ruled the question itself violated the Submission Clause of the Virginia Constitution because “the ballot language proposed in HB 1384 submits to voters a flagrantly misleading question to the voters, and because the ballot language did not accurately describe the proposed amendment as it was passed by the General Assembly.”

It is among the legal challenges before the Supreme Court of Virginia Monday.

We also see confusion in the way the results are being tallied — more so than the usual small differences we have observed in past years between early voting and final results during Virginia elections.

Jon Lareau, who volunteers as EPEC’s Executive Director and CTO, has been tracking the Department of Elections’ summary data results and running the numbers. (They can be viewed in a “JSON” file format, available at the bottom of its “stats” page under “media export.”)

He tallied up all of the results from each of the voting precincts across Virginia’s 133 localities — then compared that number with just locality-level results in the data.

He sees about a 67,364-ballot difference in the “yes” votes and a 26,930-ballot difference in the “no” votes when we add up the results by Precincts vs. Localities.

Confusing Results & Other Anomalies

The 70,000 vote variance we saw for Chesterfield’s tallies that EPEC Senior Analyst Rick Naigle discovered this week has been corrected.

We are told that someone loaded election results twice and apparently did not catch the error until groups began pointing it out.

(Your humble correspondent appeared on the Warroom Podcast Friday to explain the issues in the election data. See the segment here.)

This was a rushed Special Election; and the data quality throughout Early Voting as well as the many variances in the election night tallies shows it.

EPEC Team’s analysis of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from general registrars, logged by Board member Chris Rohland, shows that General Registrars across the Commonwealth were in a very short time-frame for the start of early voting on March 6th. The assembly ignored the 90-day notice that the constitution requires for this kind of referendum.

Here are some samples of issues that EPEC Team analysts documented throughout the 45-day early voting period:

• Ballot receipt dates of 2022 during the 2026 Special Election.

• Early in-person ballots recorded after the early voting period ended (600).

• Ballot counts decreasing without explanation.

• Ballots not going through scanners properly (Suffolk County).

• Problems with pollbooks not working or going down during voting.

• Ballot-scanning machines (known as DS-300s or DS-200s) not showing a proper zero count when voting begins or resumes. (The zero count is critical to ensuring how many ballots are counted each day, in addition to the ongoing count.)

• Mystery voters showing up on the Comprehensive Absentee Application List (CAAL) with no ID match in the Registered Voter List.

• Lareau documented 6,109 “approved” records on the CAAL list of permanent absentee applications with no existing record in the RVL, the official list of voter registrations for the Commonwealth. See his analysis here.

• Naigle observed ballot data showing a date-stamp of November, 2025.

  This suggests the locality did not conduct Logic & Accuracy testing on its machines prior to the start of early voting in March.

• Naigle also saw ballots processed with dates outside of voting times.

• He found an 11-point difference in the rejection rates of presumed R vs. presumed D ballots (based on light modeling and primary election voting history). His analysis showed it was not random.

• Using statewide data, he found that lean-R ballots show a higher probability (statistically significant) of their ballots being rejected into “unmarked” status. See the report here and the differences depending on mail-ballot volumes.

Back to Legal Challenges

The sloppy nature of the April 21 Constitutional referendum election data itself may not be the main factor before the Supreme Court of Virginia when it hears oral arguments from Republican assembly members Monday.

But the General Assembly’s failure to observer the 90-day statute before Early Voting started is. It would be fair to call the sloppy data quality with the Special Election that we observed a symptom of Assembly Democrats’ rush to re-draw congressional maps before the midterm elections.

“There is no question that this resolution shredded state law and tradition,” wrote Constitutional scholar and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley on his blog:

“The question is whether the justices themselves have the courage to demand more from the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Former Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli believes the Republican challengers have a strong case.

“There are four clear violations of the state constitution here,” he told the Washington Times. Democrat Attorney General Jay Jones (and the outside legal team he brought in for the appeal) would have to “win on all four to make this stick,” he added.

“I don’t think they can.”

Cuccinelli laid out the four key challenges in an X post:

He wrote:

The passage [of the referendum bill] was invalid. The amendment was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budget purposes. The General Assembly’s own call to the Governor (under Art. IV, §6 and Art. V, §5) and its governing resolution (HJR 6001) limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred. A Tazewell County judge found this action “void, ab initio.”

Art. XII, §1 requires that after first passage, a proposed amendment be “referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.” An election must intervene between first and second passage. Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.

Art. XII, §1 requires the amendment be submitted to voters “not sooner than ninety days after final passage by the General Assembly.” The timeline from second passage to the April 21 vote did not satisfy this requirement.

The fourth hurdle? The maps themselves:

Art. II, §6 requires that “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed congressional maps violate this contiguity requirement (rather badly).

Arguments are slated for 9:00 AM Monday, April 27th. Observers say the full court will likely convene. Live audio stream is here:

https://www.courts.state.va.us/courts/scv/dockets/scv_oral_session_livestream

Once more, The Maps:

Summary of ballot types:

See how your locality voted (in the unofficial results) in our interactive map here:

https://epec.info/virginia-2026-special-election-page/

More in our next report. ##

• Updates prior article for style and sentence clarity, and to include more maps.