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Early voting is five days old in Alexandria's April 21 city council special election — and the early numbers suggest significant voter engagement ahead of Election Day.
According to the city's election dashboard, 9,782 mail-in ballots have been sent to voters as of Monday, March 9. Of those, 9,781 are still awaiting return, with one marked as undeliverable. Combined with 670 early in-person voters, more than 10,400 of Alexandria's 102,597 registered voters have either cast a ballot or requested the means to do so — roughly 9.5% of the electorate before the first full week of early voting is complete.
The ballot includes the three-way city council race for the seat left open when Kirk McPike resigned in January to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates, as well as a proposed statewide constitutional amendment on congressional redistricting.
For context, the February 10 House District 5 special election that created this vacancy — the race McPike won over Republican Mason Butler — drew 8,657 total votes cast in Alexandria. Mail-in ballot requests for the April 21 election have already surpassed that number, though the vast majority of those ballots have not yet been returned.
The 670 in-person votes were split across the first two days of early voting: 379 on Friday, March 6, the first day polls opened, and 291 on Monday, March 9.
Early in-person voting is available at the Office of Voter Registration and Elections at 132 North Royal Street, Suite 100, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Extended hours begin the weekend of April 11.
The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is April 10. The deadline to register to vote is April 14, after which same-day registration is available through Election Day.
The election dashboard is available at alexandriava.gov/Elections. All figures are preliminary and subject to change.
Three candidates are on the ballot for the open city council seat: Democrat Sandy Marks and independents Frank Fannon and Alison Virginia O'Connell. Voters will also decide a proposed statewide constitutional amendment on congressional redistricting. Read the Alexandria Brief's conversations with Frank Fannon, Sandy Marks, and Alison Virginia O'Connell.
