Citizen Portal
Sign In

Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows

Get Lifetime Access

Committee refers substitute studying expansion of automatic voter registration to finance

Senate of Virginia · February 3, 2026

Loading...

AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

A substitute for SB658 converting the bill into a study was reported and referred to finance; the study would direct the secretary of administration to convene a work group to review Virginia’s partial automatic voter-registration system and recommend improvements to increase registration among eligible voters.

Senators moved to report and refer a substitute to SB658 that would direct the secretary of administration to convene a work group to study Virginia’s partial automatic voter registration system and identify improvements.

Sponsor noted that Virginia adopted a partial automatic registration system in 2020 but that about 600,000 eligible Virginians remain unregistered. The substitute asks the secretary of administration — not JLARC — to convene a work group to examine ways to make the DMV interaction seamless and reduce the need for citizens to opt in during transactions.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about who will conduct the study and whether findings will be reported back to the committee. The chair confirmed the secretary's work group will return findings to the committee and the panel voted to refer the substitute to the finance committee.