Is it time for Virginia to stop holding elections every year? Lawmakers are taking a serious look

In a year when Virginia voters will choose their next governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 members of the House of Delegates, a little-noticed legislative panel is asking a potentially seismic question: Should the state stop voting every year?

The Joint Subcommittee to Study the Consolidation and Scheduling of General Elections met for the first time last week to begin exploring whether Virginia — one of just a handful of states with statewide elections in odd-numbered years — should sync up with the federal calendar and move all general elections to even-numbered years.

On the surface, the idea may seem like a bureaucratic scheduling tweak. But in practice, it would touch nearly every aspect of Virginia politics, from voter turnout and local governance to campaign finance and the nationalization of state issues. It could also spell the end of one of the commonwealth’s most distinctive — and some say outdated — political traditions.

“There’s a ton of information to digest, a ton of things to consider,” said state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, who chairs the bipartisan panel. “But at the end of the day, I think there’s two things that we should care about: turnout in elections and people’s voices, right? And how do we maximize that?”



https://virginiamercury.com/2025/07/31/is-it-time-for-virginia-to-stop-holding-elections-every-year-lawmakers-are-taking-a-serious-look/