2018 Disability Voter registration at the Virginia Beach Director of Elections Office
by James C. Sherlock
Sometimes, government offices are better than you can imagine.
My wife and I cast early ballots on Thursday. We went to the Virginia Beach Director of Elections office at the Municipal Center. Everything about the experience was great, and better than it needed to be.
Now, an interruption in a communication link between the Department of Motor Vehicles and Department of Elections computer systems was discovered by the Department of Elections.
First, good for the Virginia Department of Elections. A failure to discover this issue until closer to election day would have been a nightmare. Whining at that office was notable by its absence.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that more than 100,000 registrations and registration updates such as address changes were transferred to the Department of Elections system this week. No data was lost, but local registrars will have to process the new data quickly.
Virginia Beach Director of Elections Christine Lewis’ office is handling our 7,500 of the total. From the Pilot story:
“It won’t impact the operations of the voters,” Lewis said. “It’s just going to cause additional overtime that we weren’t planning for. But we’ll get it done.”
Another no whining zone.
As for the early voting experience, I called down to the Registrar’s office ahead of the trip. The Municipal Center is a maze and parking can be an issue.
Not only was the phone answered promptly, but I don’t remember going through layers of prompts to get there. The young man who answered was not just polite, but solicitous. Made sure I had good directions, and was particularly eager to tell me where to park.
Upon arrival, curbside voting was set up. We are not handicapped, but some of the lanes were blocked with cones so we pulled up to ask where to turn to park.
The amiable man standing there told us no need to park. He took our drivers licenses, called them in to the office and about five minutes later a very pleasant woman arrived with our ballots in individual plastic brief folders, each with a pen and “I voted” sticker.
She waited while we marked the ballots, thanked us for voting, and wished us a nice day.
As I said, the experience was much better than it needed to be.
Ms Lewis has only been in office since March. The people we dealt with were wonderful, and it showed that she is a heck of a leader.
If we needed more evidence, the Virginian-Pilot story discussed earlier provided it.
They are “getting it done” quite well. Thank you.
