Registrars in college towns across Southwest and Southside Virginia are expecting same-day voter registration to reach near presidential election numbers during the 2026 midterm.
Radford, Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Montgomery County registrars have said that they expect same-day voter registration to be near the numbers they saw in the 2024 presidential race. The four localities have large student populations and have seen efforts by colleges and universities to get out the vote.
Same-day voter registration is fairly new in Virginia. A bill to allow same-day voter registration was passed by the General Assembly in 2020 and enacted Oct. 1, 2022, in time for the midterm elections that took place that year.
Ballots cast under same-day registration, either through early in-person voting at the registrar’s office or on Election Day at each precinct, are considered provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are placed in a green envelope with a voter registration form printed on the outside instead of into the ballot counting machine at the polling location.
The day after the election, registrars will attempt to register each same-day registration voter with the information provided by the voter on that envelope. If the voter can be successfully registered, the ballot is sent to the local electoral board for consideration. Provisional ballots are typically tallied by the electoral board about a week after Election Day.
Voters can take part in same-day registration early at their local registrar’s office until 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31, and on Election Day at their precinct.
Students can look up their Election Day or early voting precinct by entering the address of where they live while in school into the Virginia Department of Elections website.
College towns weigh in on process, share advice
Radford registrar Lindsey Williams said that, as of Wednesday morning, her office has seen 1,473 early voters in a town with a population of roughly 17,000. That population includes about 7,000 students who attend Radford University.
In 2024, the office had 545 same-day registrations on Election Day, and the small office is preparing for those numbers again. In 2024 there were some issues with same-day registration voters going to the incorrect precinct to cast their ballot, which invalidated their ballot. She added that precincts saw groups of students come in waves with dozens at a time descending on small polling places. This year, her office is more prepared to handle a large number of same-day registrations, she said.
In a phone interview with Cardinal News, Williams encouraged students who plan to register on the same day that they plan to vote to come prepared with the necessary information, including the address where they currently live, their college box number if applicable, their Social Security number and their date of birth.
“If you don’t have that information, you can’t cast your provisional ballot,” she said.
Williams added that students who plan take part in same-day registration should be prepared to wait in line on Election Day.
“A lot of things that we see, on Election Day at the precinct, is the voter not completing the provisional ballot envelope,” she said. “So if a voter doesn’t check that they are a U.S. citizen or they don’t enter their Social Security number or date of birth, then that would prevent us from registering them to vote and essentially the electoral board cannot count their provisional ballot.”
About 15 miles north as the crow flies, Montgomery County registrar Connie Viar said her office is fielding lots of calls from Virginia Tech students who are asking where and how to do same-day registration. As of Thursday morning, Viar’s office had received 25 same-day registration voters.
“I have ordered enough provisional ballots to match what we received in 2024,” she said via email. The total provisional ballots received that election was 4,298, she added.
Her office plans to staff the student precincts on Election Day with extra elections officers who are trained to handle same-day registration and provisional ballots. Virginia Tech staff has also worked with the county’s chief election officers to redesign the polling place set-up and to provide additional stanchions to assist with expected lines, she said.
“My suggestion is for any voter that missed the [Oct. 23] registration deadline, to come into our office by Saturday, Oct. 31 by 5 p.m. to do the same-day voter or provisional,” Viar said. “If you are a VT on-campus student, the line late in the day can take time to go through. Trends show that students appear late in the day for any election, creating a bottleneck in the workflow for the voter and the officers completing procedural tasks.”
Lynchburg registrar Trish Jones said that her office is expecting a “sizeable number” of same-day registrations this year.
During the 2024 presidential election, there were 2,672 provisional ballots citywide. In 2025, the city saw 1,110 provisional ballots, and in the April special election there were 895 provisional ballots, she said during a phone interview.
“I’m thinking we’re going to fall somewhere between ’24 and ’25 November results,” she said, regarding the number of provisional ballots expected this year. “There’s a huge push for students to vote.”
Lynchburg has a population of roughly 80,000 and five different colleges and universities within the city limits. The largest institution of higher education in the city is Liberty University, with a student population of 16,000 on campus.
Jones said students should make sure they know their campus mailbox number, their Lynchburg address, and they should bring their Virginia driver’s license or their college-issued student identification card if they don’t have a Virginia drivers license, in order to vote.
About an hour’s drive north on Interstate 29, Charlottesville registrar Taylor Yowell said that early in-person and mail-in ballot turnout has been close to presidential election numbers, and she expects same-day voter registration to follow that trend as well.
Charlottesville has a population of roughly 44,000 and a student population at the University of Virginia of more than 26,000, and Yowell said that the city has seen up to 2,000 same-day voter registrations in past elections. Student precincts have seen more than 700 voters on Election Day and, this year, University of Virginia student registration is higher than in previous elections, according to a report by CBS19.
“It’ll probably be a little quicker if we have folks do it at our office rather than wait until Election Day,” she said during a phone interview.
