Norfolk's Ballot, Top to Bottom: Senate, House, City Hall and Three Amendments
The federal races headline it, but Tuesday's Norfolk ballot runs from the U.S. Senate to the city's own offices. Here is the whole page, in order, before you stand in the booth.
A Norfolk ballot on Tuesday is a layer cake. At the top: Virginia's election for the U.S. Senate, one of the thirty-odd seats nationally that will decide the chamber's balance, with the Commonwealth's race drawing national attention and money into Hampton Roads' television market for months. Every Norfolk voter sees it; the whole country will read its result.
Next: the U.S. House. Norfolk is divided between the 2nd and 3rd Congressional Districts — the line runs through the city, so your representative depends on your street. Both districts also bind Norfolk to its neighbors: the 2nd to Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore side of the region, the 3rd toward Portsmouth, Newport News and Richmond's suburbs. Your sample ballot, on the state Citizen Portal, names your district and its candidates exactly.
Then the city's own layer: Norfolk's local offices on this cycle, decided by wards and superwards in the system the city adopted to balance neighborhood and citywide representation — the races that set the council which will argue about resilience spending, the casino-era waterfront, school funding and the tax rate. Local turnout, as ever, will run far below the federal top of the ticket, though the council's decisions will touch voters' daily lives more directly than most of Washington's.
At the bottom, the three proposed Virginia constitutional amendments — the only items on the ballot that, once decided, cannot be undone by any legislature. Polls run 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., at your assigned precinct, with ID or a signed ID Confirmation Statement. Read the whole page before you fill it in: Tuesday's ballot is longer than the ads suggest, and all of it counts.
