On January 31, the Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee passed SB 62. It provides that voter registration forms should ask for a political party selection. The bill also says that parties would then be free to decide whether to let all voters vote in its primaries, or just members of the party, or just members of the party and independents, or just voters who didn’t vote in the primary of any other party. Under existing law, the voter registration form doesn’t ask the voter to choose a party, and any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary.

The bill would not permit voters to register into an unqualified party. However, the bill is vague as to whether the voter would write in the name of a party on a blank space, or whether the form would have checkboxes for the qualified parties.

The vote in Committee was 8-7.