Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has issued an executive order to require all votes for the upcoming November election be cast with a paper ballot. Executive Order 35 , signed on Wednesday, codifies the election security procedures put into place during Youngkin’s administration.
The order outlines several election integrity requirements, including a “documented chain of custody” wherein ballots will be tracked through “every step of the process,” and that no voting machines will be used — just paper ballot-counting machines that are not connected to the internet. EO 35 also instructs the state’s Department of Elections to remove “non-citizens who may have purposefully or accidentally registered to vote.” Between January 2022 and July 2024, the Youngkin administration’s records revealed that over 6,300 non-citizens were removed from the voter rolls.
Election officials also found and removed 79,867 deceased individuals from the voter rolls as well as registered voters who had moved out of state. “The Virginia model for Election Security works. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue,” the governor said in a statement .
“Every legal vote deserves to be counted without being watered down by illegal votes or inaccurate machines. In Virginia, we don’t play games and our model for election security is working,” Youngkin continued. He went on to describe the process by which paper ballots are counted and verif.