Voting on first day of early voting in Virginia- this is at the polling location in the Courthouse area of Arlington.

/ Tyrone Turner DCist/WAMU

Update:

Fairfax County elections officials tweeted Thursday that they have finished processing the thousands of applications received earlier in the week from the state — just under the wire before Election Day next week.

Mix-ups and glitches at the state level caused the applications, originally submitted this summer, to be delayed in getting to Fairfax County and other local registrars, leaving the offices scrambling to process them in time. In Fairfax, that meant “15-plus hour days” from staff to handle 11,000 registration applications.

A total of 149,000 registration applications were sent out to local registrars on Monday. In October, the same problem affected an additional 100,000 applications.

Fairfax voters whose registrations were included in the delayed batch should receive a notice in the mail confirming their registration.

Original:

Technical issues and delays at the state level are continuing to cause headaches for local election officials.

A week before Election Day, the Virginia Department of Elections sent another large and unexpected batch of voter registration applications to Fairfax County and other municipalities. Fairfax election officials say they are now doing “whatever it takes” to ensure applicants are on the official list of registered voters and thus can vote in a normal manner come Nov. 8, the county government said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the state agency had sent hundreds of thousands of applications to local jurisdictions overnight, after technical problems left the applications in limbo for months.

The Fairfax County government said in the statement local officials had successfully processed the initial batch of over ten thousand applications that had arrived at that time. On Monday, the county received another 11,000 applications. The applications were from people who registered to vote at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles between May and September, according to the state’s Department of Elections. Individuals who updated their address or made other changes also have their voter registration information impacted.

The Virginia Department of Elections said an additional 149,000 voter records were ultimately sent to 133 general registrars, including Fairfax, on Monday. Local officials will again have to individually process each record to determine voter eligibility in accordance with state law.

Last week, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals accepted responsibility for the technical problems plaguing the state’s voter registration system. She also revealed that state election officials had mistakenly sent more than 175,000 mailings to voters’ home addresses instead of P.O. boxes, and another 31,000 mailings were missing key address details. She told VPM News that corrected mailings were sent out in October and local registrars had processed all the voter files the department identified in late September.

The Virginia Department of Elections also said last week that officials would award a new contract to replace the Virginia Election and Registration Information System, a fifteen year old system. Implementation would take at least two years.

Voters can confirm their registration status by calling their county elections or checking online. For the first time, Virginians can also register in person on Election Day and vote a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots aren’t counted until elections officials have had a chance to validate the new voter’s registration information. For more information, check out the DCist/WAMU voter guide.

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