Governor Glenn Youngkin Issues Executive Order to Further Enhance Security of the Commonwealth’s Electoral Process

Governor Glenn Youngkin Issues Executive Order to Further Enhance Security of the Commonwealth's Electoral Process

RICHMOND, VA - Today, Governor Glenn Youngkin issued Executive Order 53 to further enhance the security of Virginia's elections. The Order implements important steps to ensure the accuracy of Virginia voter rolls by modernizing and tightening voting system standards and ensuring cohesive cooperation with state and federal agencies.

Executive Order 53 directs the Virginia Commissioner and Department of Elections to strengthen election security and integrity by coordinating with federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), ensuring that data is shared securely and ineligible voters are expeditiously removed from the rolls in compliance with state and federal law. It also requires continued and expanded use of DHS's SAVE database to identify non-citizens, participation in federal technology evaluation programs, and the adoption of updated federal voting system guidelines (VVSG 2.0) into Virginia's certification standards while ensuring they remain stricter than federal requirements. Finally, it mandates that the Virginia Fusion Center and Department of Emergency Management conduct a statewide election preparedness exercise before early voting begins to test coordination, response plans, and communication across agencies.

"Free and fair elections are the bedrock of our democracy," said Governor Glenn Youngkin. "That's why it is so important that we do everything we can to make our elections as secure as possible, ensuring that our lists are accurate and our systems are reliable. The Executive Order I am issuing today builds upon our previous work to make Virginia's election security the best in the nation. Virginia has paper ballots, counting machines and not voting machines, no internet connections, along with extensive procedures to remove ineligible individuals from the voter rolls."

Executive Order 53 builds on the administration's lengthy record of strengthening and safeguarding Virginia's election system, including Executive Orders 31 and 35 issued last year. Executive Order 31 established a multi-agency data sharing protocol in regard to voter list maintenance. Executive Order 35 broadened the focus of election security to ballot security procedures, rigorous testing of counting machines, and strengthened standards for maintaining accurate voter rolls. Additional efforts implemented by the Youngkin Administration to improve Virginia's list maintenance include establishing one-to-one data-sharing agreements with eleven states, conducting two National Change of Address mailings, and streamlining the process for removing deceased voters through an audit of Virginia deceased records.

The Governor's full executive order is available here.

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