New restrictions on wireless communication in Virginia polling places will significantly slow election returns in Fairfax tonight. According to the Fairfax County Electoral Board, staff in the county's precincts must manually tabulate results and phone in returns to the Office of Elections in order to comply with restrictions passed earlier this year by the General Assembly. The Assembly voted to prohibit the use of wireless communications on voting equipment while the polls are open on election day.
The wireless component on the county's 1,200 voting machines was disabled during the pre election set up and testing of the equipment. As a result, the precincts do not have the ability to tabulate their machines wirelessly and cannot transmit their returns via modem to the Fairfax County Government Center.It would be fine to transmit the result wirelessly.The official Virginia state elections site was still showing a couple of major Fairfax County races in which a major party candidate was tabulated as having received ZERO votes.
