Virginia leaders considering common-sense change to state election schedules

Donald Trump wants fewer people – he’d prefer zero – voting in elections. Virginia wants as many folks to vote as possible.

A General Assembly panel is reviewing options to move the state’s off-year elections on schedule with federal elections, meaning, we’d elect our governor and members of the House of Delegates and State Senate alongside elections for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and president.

The obvious goal: to get more people weighing in with respect to our state races.

As it is, our odd-number-year elections get a fraction of the turnout of federal midterms and presidential years.

For instance, last year’s governor’s race had voter turnout at around half the number of registered voters in the state; the 2024 presidential election had around 70 percent turnout.

Now, of course, it wouldn’t hurt people’s inclination to want to cast a vote if we’d actually count them when cast.

I bring that up against the backdrop of the MAGA majority on the Virginia Supreme Court invalidating the votes of 3.1 million Virginians in the April 21 redistricting referendum.

Turnout for that off-year, off-cycle matter was just under 50 percent, though now, officially, because of the votes of four MAGA Supreme Court justices, it was zero percent.

I digress.

To change our state election cycles, we’d have to amend our state Constitution, which involves, you guessed it, eventually, the voters need to approve a constitutional amendment via a referendum.

The UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy presented the results of a poll of 1,000 Virginia residents to the legislative panel showing that changing the calendar would get 42 percent of us to be more likely to vote in state elections.

Only 4 percent said it would make them less likely to vote.

Seems like a no-brainer.