Virginia’s Department of Elections has awarded a contract for a new statewide voter registration system.
The new $13.5 million system will be built and implemented by a Baltimore company, the Canton Group, and is expected to go live in February 2025.
The move to a new system comes after recent technical and operational problems complicated the work of local registrars.
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The Youngkin administration has blamed the recent delays on the state’s current 15-year-old system. The Virginia Election and Registration Information System, known as VERIS, was implemented in 2007.
“Due to the critical importance of this project, this procurement was subject to the state’s high risk requirements, including review by the Virginia Information Technology Agency and the Office of the Attorney General,” said Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Susan Beals.
Youngkin campaigned on the issue of election integrity, and promised to bring a supposed private-sector efficiency to public service. In September, Attorney General Jason Miyares established an Election Integrity Unit, although Miyares has said he doesn’t believe there has been any significant voter fraud in Virginia.
The new system will include expanded candidate management tools, enhanced features for absentee voting, streamlined voter registration workflows, including preregistration of 16-year-olds and same-day-registration enhancements, according to a news release from the Department of Elections.
In addition, the system will provide improved functionality for election night reporting, including reporting by precinct, as well as ballot proofing and ranked choice voting.
The elections department said it will work with local registrars to evaluate and review new functionality, when it becomes available.
Funding for the system came from the Virginia General Assembly. After three proposals were reviewed, the initial implementation is anticipated to cost $13.5 million, after which annual hosting and maintenance would cost $2.9 million per year for up to 10 years.
After development, customization, configuration, data conversion, delivery, installation, implementation, integration, and testing, followed by user training and mock elections, the system is expected to go live in February 2025.
