VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Election Day may be over, but it’s now a busy time for election officials who must verify and ensure that unofficial results are accurate, a process called polling.

“It’s a process, and I can tell you that I think the public wants us to undertake this process. There’s a reason why we’re doing this and I think it’s very important that everyone knows that ” said Jeffrey L. Marks, chairman of the Virginia Beach Election Commission.

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On Thursday, election officials began canvassing at the Municipal Center. Although state law gives them until Nov. 15 to certify the results with the State Board of Elections, they hope to be able to do so by the middle of next week.

The bipartisan election board oversees the process, but Marks emphasizes that politics is kept out of it.

“We’re not beholden to any party or any candidate. We’re beholden to the city of Virginia Beach and, frankly, the 335,000 registered voters here,” Marks said.

The process involves reviewing the results reported by voting machines and making sure they appear to add up correctly.

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In other years, this process has faced scrutiny over the possibility of recounts, which can happen in Virginia if a losing candidate is within a certain percentage of the leader.

This year, it doesn’t appear that any races will be recounted in the city.

Political party observers are allowed to follow all this.

“What you’re trying to ensure is that if something happens, it’s isolated. It’s not systematic. It’s resolved and if something happens, we’ll find it,” Marks said.

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They are also still conducting provisional ballots, including for people who used same-day registration.

Marks says these efforts are resource-intensive because election officials must verify that a person was eligible to vote. He says it would be easier if people just registered to vote through the normal process before the deadline.

This year, there will be about 5,000 provisional ballots, he said.

“A lot of research is done behind the scenes that has to go into each provisional ballot, so you can understand that we are frustrated with the number of provisional ballots,” Marks said.

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He wants to assure people that results are counted accurately and fairly.

“Obviously there are certain secrets that we can’t divulge when it comes to security and things of that nature, but the more I can go out and explain to people and maybe they’ll try to understand,” he said. he declared.