I have a document that was signed by an Virgina electronic notary public. So, I sent it to the Secretary of the Commonwealth to be Authenticated for an Apostille for international use. The document was rejected because the document has to be physically signed by the affiant & the notary for international. 
Also, Virginia will not certify any document that contains an electronic notarization from VA or any state.
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Before I retired processed Apostilles for large global company. Countries belonging to Hague Convention have specific requirements. Electronic notarization do not qualify as being secured. My son is in IT and when he read about process he told me this is not secure due to record retention and can he easily hacked. Maybe when world becomes more AI oriented electronic notarization will work. Currently, IT companies and software companies are starting to merge parts of their companies so AI will work better in future and be more secure. Still years away from happening. I always have CNBC on my tv in the background playing while I work. Tech and AI leaders, CEO’s, etc. provide great information on future in technical world. They also talk about real estate and how it is in the toilet. builders are talking about changing from building mega new homes to smaller eco friendly homes. FINALLY !!
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I glanced at the Virginia Secretary of the Commonwealth’s page about authentications. Just as alnmurray reports, they just won’t provide authentications for electronic documents. I also notice the only way described on the website to send in documents for authentications is a mailing address. So how would one even submit an electronic document? Save it on a CD-ROM and mail in the CD-ROM?
I have been closing RON documents loans since 2020 and was promoting GN work for a while until I found out that documents were not being accepted via RON and the agency/company failed to let the signers know this before hand. I don’t promote RON for GN anymore because of this.
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Looks to me like RON is more problematic than it’s worth. Not the end-all they thought it would be.
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Congratulations on having enough of a following that you can promote anything to your customers, rather than just responding to whatever comes in by phone, text, or email. If there’s a notary out there that has a loyal customer base, who really want to use their favorite notary rather than the guy at the local parcel store, maybe they could promote remote ink notarization (RIN) for occasions when a physical meeting isn’t practical.
Thanks for posting this! Apostilles are a regular part of my business and my clients ask about RON now. Thisi s good information to know.
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I don’t this matters for NYS but I’ll find out in the coming days. Hopefully this is just limited to VA.
It would be a nice thing if there was a list of states that allow E-notary for domestic & international use. BTW what state are in doing apostille in?
The courts of almost all states recognize electronic notarizations if they were performed by a notary in a state where enotarizations are legal. If for some reason a notarized electronic document needed to be admitted as evidence in a court case, normally it would be admitted, as long as enotarization was allowed in the state where it was notarized.
But if the document is to be filed with an agency in the executive branch of government, some agencies accept enotarization and some don’t. A county might not accept enotarized deeds to be filed in the property records. A teacher might not accept an enotarized permission slip for a field trip to Canada. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is infamous for only accepting enotarized documents and refusing paper documents.
When it comes to what the notaries in a state are allowed to do by that state, I’ve never heard of a state that tries to regulate where the document goes after it’s been notarized. May be it gets filed in the same town where the signer and notary live, maybe it gets sent to Montana, maybe it gets sent to Peru. The notary regulations don’t care.
Also, you mention domestic use in a thread that mentions apostilles quite a bit. Apostilles are not used for documents that stay in the US.
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Documents that was signed digital (RON) can’t be apostille as original copy
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Which state are you referring to? I believe there are states that either can issue apostilles for electronic originals, if they are electronically signed by an appropriate official and the electronic version is sent in for the apostille.