Our Voter Guide for the special election is now up and running with basic information on the redistricting referendum.
Early voting in Virginia’s April 21 redistricting referendum is slated to start Friday everywhere across the commonwealth, except for Tazewell County.
About 800 absentee ballots are supposed to be mailed out to voters across Tazewell County, and voting machines have to be checked in the week leading up to the March 6 start date. But as of Tuesday afternoon, there were no plans to complete that work.
“We’re just at a complete stand still,” said Irma Mitchell, chair of the Tazewell County Board of Elections. “We’re just in the hands of the court.”
Tazewell County’s election apparatus is at the center of two legal battles regarding the constitutionality of the redistricting referendum. That has led to the halt of all efforts in Tazewell to administer the upcoming election, as ordered by the county circuit court.
The legal landscape Tazewell could be thrust into — as the sole locality abstaining from a statewide election — is uncertain. A court hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday morning to address that possible circumstance, which county attorney Aaron Gillespie called unprecedented.
“There’s nothing on the books, for lack of a better way of putting it, that dictates what happens in this situation,” he said.
The legal back-and-forth tying Tazewell’s hands
Tazewell County Circuit Court Chief Judge Jack Hurley Jr. ruled in January in favor of a complaint filed by a group of Republican state lawmakers to temporarily halt the redistricting effort. That ruling was appealed by Democrats to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which determined that the April 21 referendum can move forward as it prepares to hear the appeal after the election.
Then, in February, a second complaint was filed in Tazewell County by the National Republican Congressional Committee, other conservative groups and two of Virginia’s Republican congressmen. Hurley again ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. His second ruling was a more sweeping order that told state officials to stop “administering, preparing for, taking any action to further the procedure for the referendum or otherwise move forward with causing an election” on the grounds that the legislation behind the redistricting is riddled with legal problems. That ruling has also been appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Registrars across Virginia received communication from the state Department of Elections that said, upon further review, the court’s second order applied only to the named defendants, including local election officials in Tazewell County. The prior request to pause ballot issuance was withdrawn for other localities, but remained in place in Tazewell.
Gillespie has asked for a temporary suspension of the court’s order so that the county and employees of the registrar’s office can continue preparations to start early voting in the county, should the state Supreme Court take the matter up and determine that voting in Tazewell can begin on Friday.
“I remain cautiously optimistic that the right thing will be done,” he said. “I don’t want anyone’s right to vote on such an important issue to be jeopardized.”
Republicans’ efforts have barred voting in a solidly Republican locality
Voting officials in Tazewell are looking to the Wednesday hearing to gain clarity on what — if anything — they can do to administer the election in a county with a population of a little over 40,000. Officials fear that damage has already been done by the court in halting efforts to prepare for the election so near the early voting start date.
“Even if the court were to suspend or lift the current order and permit early voting to begin on Friday, practical considerations exist,” Brian Earls, Tazewell County’s registrar, said in an email.
“As a result of the temporary restraining order, our office has been unable to proceed with preparations and would, by that point, be approximately nine business days behind schedule. That delay would present significant operational challenges in attempting to safely and properly initiate early voting on short notice,” he said.
Both of the court cases filed to halt preparations for the referendum in Tazewell County were brought by Republican lawmakers and organizations. But those efforts may have inadvertently suppressed Republican votes.
Tazewell County is solidly Republican. The Republican gubernatorial candidate, former Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, won the county with a 64-point margin over Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who won statewide by a 15-point margin in November.
If the county is left out of voting for the redistricting referendum, Republicans could lose a significant number of votes through their effort to stop redistricting. There were roughly 26,000 active voters registered in Tazewell County as of March 1, according to data compiled by the state Board of Elections. Nearly 13,000 Tazewell voters cast ballots in the 2025 election.
“I don’t quite understand because in my simple eyes it will hurt the Republicans because we’re so red,” Mitchell said. “I think it’s terrible that our county is the only one that so far is not going to be voting.”
Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith of Salem was a plaintiff in the second Tazewell Court ruling. He argued that Democrats in the General Assembly had “trampled on the rights of Virginia voters to participate in the constitutional amendment process.”
“The Tazewell litigation is intended to correct that injustice and restore the rights of Virginia voters,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
More problems on the horizon?
The court cases may not be the last of the problems facing the redistricting referendum.
The referendum’s appropriations legislation, HB 1384, called for localities to set up satellite offices to allow for additional access to in-person voting.
The Department of Elections interpreted that part of the law to apply only to localities that had ordinances authorizing satellite voting offices at the time of the adoption of the statute, Gillespie said.
“There are a number of counties that do not have satellite offices,” he added. “I can’t reconcile the informal advice by what’s actually drafted in the bill.”
And it may be too late for many localities to set up new satellite voting locations before voting is set to start on Friday. Public notices need to be disseminated, and a public hearing needs to be held to establish those offices, Gillespie said. Satellite voting locations are to have all of the same security and reporting requirements as registrar’s offices.
It could be, he said, that localities without satellite offices are in violation of the law.
“How safe, pure, ethical, whatever descriptive word you want to use, how can we guarantee the accuracy or efficiency of the election itself?” he asked.
Neither House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, nor House Appropriations Chair Del. Luke Torian, D-Prince William County, has yet responded to a request for comment.
