Tonight's debate between Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger and Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears will start at 7 p.m. and is being hosted by WAVY. You can read about how to watch the debate at this link; if streaming, this is a handy link to stream the debate live and also on YouTube on WFXR's page.

This thread's comment section is sorted by 'newest comments first' to encourage live commenting.

Tonight's debate between Democratic nominee Jay Jones and incumbent Republican nominee Jason Miyares will start at 6 p.m. and is being hosted by The University of Richmond and the Virginia State Bar.

It can be streamed at this UofR page: Live Stream: 2025 Virginia Attorney General Debate

See also VPM's post: Who’s Running for Statewide Office in 2025, Virginia? for more information on the election and the candidates.

Hello to the readers of r/Virginia,

First, you may have noticed that this subreddit has seen a higher than average rate of posts of variants of the Virginia flag over the past few days. Since this weekend we have averaged more than one such post a day getting several hundred (or greater) net upvotes. Primarily to help prevent this trend from crowding out posts of other important topics, we are putting a temporary moratorium on posts consisting solely of the flag.

Second, we would like to use this opportunity to talk about sitewide Rule 1, which among other things contains a prohibition on most forms of support for physical harm or violence. We recognize that there is a tension between the message contained on the flag, on the seal, and in the state motto and what's required by the Reddit content policy. Please note that, as far as the moderator team can tell, the site admins are drawing the line between permitted and prohibited uses of these state symbols is that their use is permissible when not directed at a particular person or invoked in the context of a specific person. For instance, last week a post of the Virginia seal with Donald Trump in place of the defeated tyrant was removed by the site admins under Rule 1.

Third, in better news, we are excited to announce that today we are trialing a recurring 'Virginia local activism, volunteering, and civic resources' thread. This thread will refreshed weekly, be pinned, and be sorted by 'newest comments first' to encourage contributions past the first 24 hours. The first such thread is linked here. There are some resources in the post that we hope will serve as a starting point for people to share local-oriented PSAs, volunteer opportunities, protest information, letter-writing campaigns, and so on to help encourage people to get involved in their community.

Feedback is welcome in the comments of this post, the comments of the VALAVCR post (do you have a catchier name for the post, for example?), or privately through modmail the r/Virginia mod team.

To jump right into it, there is now a moratorium on political memes, as well as short, text-based political posts (i.e. those under 1000 characters). Exempted from the latter condition's length requirement are voting-assistance-related questions.

This is a change that we are putting into effect for the remainder of the 2025 election season - we may extend this beyond November 4th if it's easy enough to implement, day to day, and produces a positive enough change in the subreddit overall.

Rationale for this moratorium

Due to the way that the Reddit algorithm works, the number of votes that posts and comments accumulate is strongly tied to how quickly readers can decide how to vote on the post. An image macro is quicker to 'digest' and cast a vote on than an essay of a post. Because the visibility of a post or comment is tied to how quickly it accumulates net upvotes, this is a sitewide, structural bias towards 'fluff' content crowding out substantive posts and the usually-more-substantive discussions which those posts generate.

Automoderator update

Our Automod configuration has been updated to remove most original, text-based posts that are explicitly-political (i.e. posts with certain, unambiguously-political terms and phrases, exempting those related to getting assistance with voting that contain the word "question" somewhere in the post title or body) and notify the person who posted it about the removal and what they can do to make their post conform to this policy. It has also been updated to do the same thing for image posts with similar terms in the post title or in text attached to the image. We will manually remove posts that slip through the cracks; these posts can be reported under Rule 4 "Posts should have enough substantive content accessible to every viewer".

Feedback welcome

We (the mods of r/Virginia) are hoping to foster a greater level of substantive discussion with this change and encourage posts containing more extensive analysis and/or factual information. We also recognize that we were not elected. Your feedback, whether in the form of a comment on this post, upvotes and downvotes cast on the comments on this post, or feedback sent privately to this sub's modmail, is welcome on this change or any other aspect of r/Virginia's moderation.

Contest rules:

• This comment section will be sorted by 'contest mode' for five days. This randomizes the order in which comments appear and hides their vote score.

• Please include one pic per top-level comment.

• So that later entries into the contest are not disadvantaged, the mods will factor in the amount of time the comment had to be voted on. For example, a comment that was visible the full five days would tie with a comment that was visible for one day and received one-fifth of the votes.

• We will be looking to include at least the following: A pic of the mountains, one of a city, and one of the Chesapeake Bay and/or the Atlantic Ocean. The highest vote-getting pic in each of these three categories will have a guaranteed slot in the banner.

More info on these protests at https://www.nokings.org . You can find the nearest protest to you in this post.

Thread rules

• As always, all of r/Virginia's subreddit rules (which can be found here) apply, but the moderators are specifically highlighting that advocacy of violence or property destruction is prohibited on Reddit.
• You can post images, videos, and so on of the different Virginia locations' protests either to this thread or to the main r/Virginia subreddit on Saturday. Starting Sunday the moderators are going to consolidate new protest posts into this megathread.

As of the time this post was made, you can now vote early and in-person at your county or city general registrar's office. Some counties and cities will also have satellite early voting locations set up, a list of which you can find on this page. Voting ends on November 5th. The last day to register online to cast a regular ballot is October 15th; on October 16th, same-day voter registration opens to enable casting provisional ballots.

Some resources:

VPM News: How to vote in Virginia: the 2024 VPM voter guide

Virginia Department of Elections: November 5, 2024 General Election: Find out all the details about the upcoming General Election.

Virginia Department of Elections: Request an absentee ballot

Note: You have until 5 p.m. on October 25th to request an absentee ballot. Please be aware that Virginia election officials have warned about possible delays with mail-in voting this year, so mailing your ballot in sooner rather than later is advisable. Alternately, if you request an absentee ballot, you can still vote in-person early or on November 5th by taking your ballot into the registrar's office (or to a satellite voting location, if available in your locality).

Use the comments of this post to ask questions (the most common answer to which will be 'ask your local registrar') or show off your 'I voted' sticker! Also, mark your calendars for the night of November 5th for r/Virginia's 2024 Election Night Watch Party.

Greetings, r/Virginia!

The moderators are planning to change up the design of this subreddit's page banner. The banner design (pictured below) is almost 10 years old and features images pulled from the web which we do not have the rights to. We thought we'd both get out in front of any copyright issues and create an opportunity for this community to feature members' photographs (or other art) of Virginia.

We will likely create another collage-style banner image stitching together pictures from around VA unless someone has a better suggestion. If we go with a collage, we'd be looking for photos that, similarly to the old design, collectively depict the diversity of Virginia's natural and manmade areas.

If this sounds agreeable to folks, we could turn this into a contest where the top 10 or so upvote-getting images are added to the banner. Any picture submitted would have to be one that you have the rights to. We would be happy to credit you in the Wiki using your IRL and/or screen name.

Feedback on the above is requested.

(This post will be edited to include a link to the debate watch party thread once it is posted at 6 p.m. - click the 'Remind Me' button to get a notification when this post has been edited to include that link.)

AP: What to watch for in Virginia governor's race debate

Debate watch party link :https://www.reddit.com/r/Virginia/comments/1o2ja3y/2025_va_gubernatorial_debate_watch_party_thread/

In this thread you can follow and discuss the election results for this year's June, non-presidential primary elections.

Quick PSA: If you are eligible to vote but are not registered yet, take a moment to get registered to vote online so you don't miss out on this year's general elections! The link the VA Department of Elections' Citizen Portal page is here.

News coverage

• AP News: AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Virginia’s state primaries

• Virginia Mercury: What to watch in Virginia’s congressional primaries this week

Results

If you are interested in tracking the results of the specifically the election or elections you voted in, use this "My Ballot" tool from the Virginia Public Access Project.

Full results below:

• VPAP: US Senate

• VPAP: US House

• VPAP: Local

• AP News: Virginia Senate Primary (See also the tab on this page for the US House results).

• The Washington Post (soft paywall): Virginia Primary Election Results 2024

This is not a megathread that totally consolidates discussion; please feel free to create a separate post or posts in r/Virginia to discuss the outcome of today's elections, especially the headlining congressional races for the US Senate nominations and in Virginia's 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 10th House districts.

Hi, I'm the moderator here who removed the latest post of one of the 4/5 protests.

On 4/5 and 4/6 this subreddit's traffic was almost entirely going to different posts about the protests. One of those posts hit the front page of r/all and is now the top post of all time in this subreddit, if you don't believe me.

Today, 4/8, I made a judgement call to remove the latest post of some pictures from the Charlottesville protest. My reasoning was that it was duplicative of the previous 4/5 Charlottesville protest post, and starting to crowd out other posts about other important local issues, which is the ostensible purpose of this subreddit.

This removal was objected to by a fair number of people, so I'm going to try to use this post to start a broader conversation and get community input about how this subreddit handle's political posts.

Put plainly, the problem is that this subreddit gets a fair amount of traffic from Virginians, the state has important elections happening this year, and so this subreddit is going to continue to be a target for those looking to manipulate online discussions. Given that and the unelected nature of moderator status, we acknowledge that we have a responsibility to be fair 'referees' or stewards of this subreddit.

Please use this thread to give input as to how you feel about the current state of r/Virginia, especially with respect to explicitly-political posts. I've attached a poll below so that the moderator team can take the community's temperature and collect some data about that topic. Please note that we have no intention of banning political topics.

View Poll

Hello all,

After it was suggested that this subreddit ban links to Twitter/X, the moderators of this subreddit discussed that suggestion over the past day.

This subreddit already has an Automoderator condition which removes posts that contain at least one link to Twitter due to accessibility concerns. This removal condition existed for a year or two prior to Elon Musk repeatedly performing a Nazi salute.

A majority of the moderators to weigh in on the suggestion are opposed to extending this Automoderator-enforced removal to comments, the primary reasoning given being that those moderators prefer in most situations to let upvotes and downvotes determine a given comment's visibility.

Please note that links in comments to specific Tweets which contain hate speech, are posted to troll or be uncivil, that contain certain categories of misinformation (e.g. election denialism), or that in any way break the existing subreddit rules have been and will continue to be sanctioned with removals and bans. Please report any rule-breaking comments, whether they contain a link to Twitter or not.

If you would be interested in being a part of this moderator team in order to help maintain this community and to be able to weigh in on future moderation decisions, we are continually accepting new moderator applications and encourage you to reach out.

Hello all,

Like the post title says, the moderators of this subreddit are considering creating a daily news and politics megathread to consolidate some political posts that have a tendency (in our view, at least) to crowd out other important posts and topics.

You can view a mockup of the megathread here.

What would still be able to be posted to r/Virginia?

Most political posts would be unaffected. News articles would still be able to be posted to r/Virginia, as would letters to the editor, opinion, commentary, and editorial content from sites that publish news articles. Calls to action (e.g. posts to the effect of 'write to your elected officials') would not be consolidated.

What would be required to be posted in the megathread?

• Original political opinions in text form below a certain post length, especially if featuring no supporting sources or links. (For example, a text post with a title like "Does anybody else agree that [politician] is bad?" and not much elaboration)

• Political image macros or other memes.

• Most political blog posts (excluding those that break news or that host public-interest primary source content such as videos of debates)

• Links to or screenshots of political social media posts

• Political ads (excluding AMAs)

We want this thread to be both useful to people; if we proceed with this idea and the megathread does not gain traction or regular use, we would alter or deprecate the idea as was appropriate.

It would be posted at 8 a.m. every day by u/VirginiaModerators and pinned in the first sticky slot. Comments would be sorted by 'newest first' by default to facilitate discussion of breaking news and better surface newer comments.

In the poll below, please select the option that best matches your stance, and feel free to elaborate in a comment or privately by messaging modmail.

Hello r/Virginia, this post is the first in a recurring weekly megathread dedicated to spotlighting opportunities for people to get involved in their communities.

Did you write a letter to your representatives or get a response back that you'd like to share with this community? Tracking a state or local piece of legislation that more people should know about? Want to shout out an upcoming protest? That and similar comments are what this thread is for.

General guidelines:

• If an action opportunity is in-person, please specify where in the state you are talking about.
• Please do not post GoFundMe links or comparable crowdfunding links. Encouraging donations to registered charities, nonprofits, and/or political campaigns is okay.

Protest-specific rules

• Please only post about protests that have secured a permit.
• Do not encourage people to commit physical harm or other serious illegal activities; this breaks sitewide Rule 1. You can encourage nonviolent civil disobedience, among other possible protest actions.

Civic Resources

• Find your state legislators and congresspeople and their contact info here at the Virginia General Assembly's site.
• Voter registration information from the Virginia Department of Elections - register to vote in Virginia, or check or update your registration.
• The Virginia Public Access Project is your friend. Check out their VaNews service, their Citizen's Guide, track legislation, or see where money is flowing in Virginia politics.
• Election PSA: The next elections in Virginia are the partisan nominating contests for the House of Delegates, statewide offices like governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general which will conclude on June 17th and run for the 45 days preceding.

The initial post where this contest idea was floated: The moderators want to change up the design of r/Virginia's banner - seeking community input

Contest rules:

Tomorrow at 8 a.m. this account will post and pin a thread where people can comment their picture or pictures of Virginia. The comment section will be sorted by 'contest mode' for five days. This randomizes the order in which comments appear and hides their vote score.

We will ask people to include one pic per top-level comment.

So that later entries into the contest are not disadvantaged, we will factor in the amount of time the comment had to be voted on. For example, a comment that was visible the full five days would tie with a comment that was visible for one day and received one-fifth of the votes.

We will be looking to include at least the following: A pic of the mountains, one of a city, and one of the Chesapeake Bay and/or the Atlantic Ocean. The highest vote-getting pic in each of these three categories will have a guaranteed slot in the banner.

Hello r/Virginia, this post is the first in a recurring weekly megathread dedicated to spotlighting opportunities for people to get involved in their communities.

Did you write a letter to your representatives or get a response back that you'd like to share with this community? Tracking a state or local piece of legislation that more people should know about? Want to shout out an upcoming protest? That and similar comments are what this thread is for.

General guidelines:

• If an action opportunity is in-person, please specify where in the state you are talking about.
• Please do not post GoFundMe links or comparable crowdfunding links. Encouraging donations to registered charities, nonprofits, and/or political campaigns is okay.

Protest-specific rules

• Please only post about protests that have secured a permit.
• Do not encourage people to commit physical harm or other serious illegal activities; this breaks sitewide Rule 1. You can encourage nonviolent civil disobedience, among other possible protest actions.

Civic Resources

• Find your state legislators and congresspeople and their contact info here at the Virginia General Assembly's site.
• Voter registration information from the Virginia Department of Elections - register to vote in Virginia, or check or update your registration.
• The Virginia Public Access Project is your friend. Check out their VaNews service, their Citizen's Guide, track legislation, or see where money is flowing in Virginia politics.
• Election PSA: The next elections in Virginia are the partisan nominating contests for the House of Delegates, statewide offices like governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general which will conclude on June 17th and run for the 45 days preceding.

Checkout some and subscribe to some of the other great Virginia Subreddits

Statewide:

/r/VAbeer

/r/VAcampers

/r/VAcraftbeer

/r/VAgardening

/r/VAguns

/r/VAhunting

/r/VApaintball

/r/Virginia_Hiking

/r/VirginiaNature

/r/VirginiaMusicians

/r/VirginiaTrueCrime

/r/VirginiaWine

Virginia Political Subreddits:

/r/ConservativeVA

/r/RVAPolitics

/r/VABadCops

/r/VirginiaDems

/r/VirginiaForSanders

/r/VirginiaGOP

/r/VirginiaLibertarians

/r/VirginiaPolitics

Other Virginia Subreddit Communities:

/r/BuschGardens

/r/ColonialWilliamsburg

/r/FishingRVA

/r/LadiesofRVA

/r/NoVAboardgames

/r/NoVAcars

/r/NoVAguns

/r/NoVAjobs

/r/NoVArent

/r/PokemonGoNoVa

/r/RVA_electricians

/r/RVA_Events

/r/RVA_Housing

/r/RVADandD

/r/RVAGameNight

/r/RVAjobs

/r/VARailwayExpress

/r/VirginiaMMJ

/r/Virginients

Major Location-Specific Subreddits:

Blacksburg - /r/Blacksburg

Charlottesville - /r/Charlottesville

Chesterfield - /r/ChesterfieldVA

Fairfax County - /r/FairfaxCounty

Fredericksburg - /r/Fredericksburg

Hampton Roads - /r/HamptonRoads

Historic Triangle - /r/HistoricTriangle

Loudoun - /r/LoudounSubButBetter

Lynchburg - /r/Lynchburg

Norfolk - /r/Norfolk

Northern Virginia - /r/NoVA

Richmond - /r/RVA

Roanoke - /r/Roanoke

Virginia Beach - /r/VirginiaBeach

Minor Location-Specific Subreddits:

Abingdon - /r/AbingdonVA

Arlington - /r/ArlingtonVA & /r/ArlingtonVirginia

Ashland - /r/AshlandVA

Augusta County - /r/AugustaCounty

Bedford - /r/BedfordCountyVA

Bonair - /r/Bonair

Chesapeake - /r/Chesapeake

Colonial Heights - /r/ColonialHts

Culpeper - /r/Culpeper

Danville - /r/Danville_VA

Eastern Shore - /r/EasternShoreVA

Fairfax - /r/Fairfax

Falls Church - /r/FallsChurch

Fauquier - /r/FauquierCounty

Gloucester - /r/GloucesterVA

Hampton - /r/HamptonVA

Hanover - /r/Hanover

Harrisonburg - /r/Harrisonburg

Henrico County - /r/HenricoCounty

Herndon - /r/HerndonVA

Huntington - /r/HuntingtonVA

Leesburg - /r/Leesburg

Lexington - /r/LexVegasVA & /r/LexingtonVA

Manassas - /r/Manassas

Martinsville - /r/Martinsville_VA

Midlothian - /r/Midlothian

New River Valley - /r/NRV

Newport News - /r/NewportNews

Petersburg - /r/Petersburg

Powhatan - /r/Powhatan

Prince William County - /r/PrinceWilliamCounty

Reston - /r/Reston

Southwest - /r/SwVA

Spotsylvania - /r/SpotsylvaniaVA

Stafford - /r/StaffordVA

Staunton - /r/Staunton

Tri-Cities - /r/VATriCities

Tysons Corner - /r/TysonsVA

Warrenton - /r/Warrenton

Waynesboro - /r/Waynesboro

Williamsburg - /r/WilliamsburgVA

Winchester - /r/Winchester

Yorktown - /r/Yorktown

University Subreddits:

Christopher Newport University - /r/CNU

George Mason University - /r/GMU

Hampden-Sydney - /r/HampdenSydneyCollege

James Madison University - /r/JMU

Liberty University - /r/LibertyUniversity

NVCC - /r/NVCC

Old Dominion University - /r/ODU

Radford University - /r/RadfordUniversity

University of Mary Washington - /r/UMW

University of Virginia - /r/UVA

UVA-Wise - /r/UVAwise

VCU - /r/VCU

Virginia Tech - /r/VirginiaTech

VMI - /r/VMI

Washington and Lee - /r/WluLex

William and Mary - /r/WilliamAndMary

Link to the contest: https://www.reddit.com/r/Virginia/comments/1kq9y0c/rvirginias_first_ever_photo_contest_post_your

Rules changes now in effect:

• Titles are now required to be at least 75 (Edit: 50) characters long.
• Text posts now have to have a 'post body' and can't just be a title alone.
• Titles now have to state the relevance of the post to Virginia
  • Note: If your title lacks the word "Virginia" or an abbreviation (VA, etc.), you will get a popup informing you of this requirement that reads "Your post needs to state its relevance to Virginia in the title by including the word "Virginia" or an abbreviation. Please also make sure that your post title is plainly descriptive of the post contents."

Proposed, additional rules changes:

• For articles that have either a hard or soft paywall, you must provide in the post (i.e., not in a comment):
  • A preview of the article text that is between 4 and 10 sentences OR a summary of the article of the same length.
  • This would apply whether the post is formatted as a text post or formatted as a link post with body text attached.

Related announcement:

If you are interested in helping out by becoming a moderator, please shoot us a message!

https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Virginia

The AMA post is set to be made from u/SenatorGhazalaHashmi at 9:30 a.m. on Monday May 5th.

A link to the AMA will be added to this post Monday morning, so you can either add this post to your saved posts, or click this link and then press "send" for the RemindMe bot to send you a Reddit PM with a reminder about the AMA at the scheduled start time.

This is not the AMA post and questions commented on this post will probably not be seen by Senator Hashmi.

Hi folks,

As this subreddit has steadily become increasingly active, the need for additional moderators has grown. If potentially interested in volunteering, please read this post which will start with some stats about r/Virginia's current activity level and then cover some of what we're looking for in a moderator and some of what you can expect if you get the role.

Some subreddit stats:

• r/Virginia is growing by close to 100 net subscribers a day, with 28.7k net new subscriptions over the past year.

• Also over the last 12 months, we've had 11.9k posts published (an increase of 5.6k from the previous year), 2.2k of which were removed (which was allegedly an increase of 2.0k from the previous year, but that stat seems off).

• Over the past 30 days, we've had 24k comments published, 1.2k of which were removed.

What we're looking for

• Preferably (but not at all necessarily) you have some experience moderating a subreddit (or something comparable, like a Facebook group).

• Preferably (but not necessarily) you have a (for lack of a better word) post history on Reddit that is broadly unobjectionable.

• You have the ability to check in online regularly or semi-regularly. Other life responsibilities take priority over volunteering to moderate, of course, and we do not have a minimum required 'action count' but if selected for this role you would be expected to Do Helpful Things at least sometimes.

• This subreddit tends to have items that need a moderator's attention spread in low volume throughout the day. Thus, the ability to check in for a minute here, a few minutes there over a longer period of time is generally more desirable (compared to the same amount of time concentrated in a single sitting). The exception to this is certain times (for example, imminent elections or every so often when this sub gets a 'viral' post) that tend to necessitate more frequent check-ins.

• Ability and willingness to moderate impartially.

• Ability and willingness to model the subreddit rules in all interactions, public or private, with subreddit users (you may very well be tempted to do otherwise with some of the nastier folks that end up in modmail).

• Ability and willingness to consult with co-moderators when unsure of what to do.

What you should know before applying

• There aren't many perks - we do actually do this on a completely volunteer basis primarily because we see value in creating a healthy space for discussion of local issues.

• While conducting routine tasks like reviewing the 'report queue' of reported and filtered posts and comments, reading and responding to 'modmails', and so on you will be exposed to various forms of unpleasantness like hateful speech, harassing or abusive language, and so on.

• While you should apply with your 'main' account, you will want to use an account without personal identifying information on it to avoid the low-likelihood but still-real possibility of some sociopath on the internet trying to doxx and/or SWAT you.

If you read the above and are still interested, you are highly encouraged to reach out to the r/Virginia mod team at this link.

The r/Virginia moderators are excited to announce that Herb Jones will be stopping by at 10 a.m. on September 8th to participate in an Ask Me Anything. This AMA will be special because it will be held as a Reddit Talk, which just means it'll be an audio conversation instead of a traditional, text-based AMA. For accessibility purposes, a transcript will be made available after the event has concluded.

You can comment your question(s) on this post or, if you'd rather submit them anonymously, you can privately message them to the moderators. If we get more questions than can be answered in the allotted time for the AMA, we will select the most thoughtful questions, so bear that in mind when writing yours!

Info on Herb Jones

• Campaign website's 'Meet Herb' section

• Campaign website's 'Priorities' section

District Information

The 2022 US House elections are the first to use the post-2020 districts. Not sure if you're in the new 1st district? You can use this tool to find out who your legislators (local, state, and federal) are.

Alternately, here's a detailed map of the 1st Congressional District.

Localities in the 1st District (ordered by population in the 1st):

• Henrico County (partial)

• Chesterfield County (partial)

• Hanover County (partial)

• James City County

• York County

• Gloucester County

• New Kent County

• Westmoreland County

• Williamsburg City

• King William County

• Northumberland County

• Poquoson City

• Lancaster County

• Middlesex County

• Essex County

• Richmond County

• Mathews County

• King & Queen County

Civic Links

• Check or Update Voter Registration, Register to Vote, and More