by Sarah Roderick-Fitch
Over 6,000 “noncitizens” could be added back to Virginia’s voter rolls if the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of groups advocating on behalf of immigrants prevail in their lawsuits against the commonwealth.
A pair of lawsuits filed against the state target Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 35, which aims to increase election security. However, the cases are focused on the commonwealth’s ongoing efforts to clean voter roll logs, specifically “noncitizens” registered to vote.
The Justice Department and the groups are asking the court to declare the voter purge program “unlawful,” citing the “quiet period” in the National Voter Registration Act. The plaintiffs say federal law mandates that “no such voter cancelation or list maintenance programs may be conducted” 90 days before an election.
“By cancelling voter registrations within 90 days of the Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
The Justice Department further says some of the people identified as “noncitizens” are, in fact, American citizens and, therefore, eligible to vote.
The commonwealth is among only a few states that require individuals to provide their full nine-digit Social Security number when registering to vote.
In the Aug. 7 executive action issued by Youngkin, he directed the Board of Elections to conduct daily updates on the voter rolls. Included were the removal of deceased voters, voters who have moved, and voters who have been deemed ineligible.
At the time the governor issued the executive action, Youngkin’s office indicated that over the last two years, nearly 80,000 deceased voters had been removed from voter rolls. Between January 2022 and July of this year, 6,303 noncitizens were removed from the voter rolls.
However, the lawsuits are focused on “noncitizens” that they say were “wrongfully” removed.
The initial lawsuit was filed on behalf of the League of Women Voters, the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the Campaign Legal Center, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Advancement Project.
Anna Dorman and Orion Danjuma, counselors of the first lawsuit, indicated to The Center Square that the initial number cited in Youngkin’s executive order of individuals they claim were “illegally” purged from the voter rolls has grown, “but the state has refused to provide us information about its program as required by federal law.”
The lawsuits are “seeking expedited discovery,” resulting in the commonwealth restoring all “unlawfully” removed voters to the rolls.
Youngkin offered a sharp rebuke of the Justice Department’s lawsuit, calling the suits an “attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections.” In addition, he defended the purges, citing that the commonwealth was “appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed” by then-Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine requiring the removal of noncitizens from voter rolls.
Youngkin vows to defend the laws, reiterating the commonwealth’s commitment to “secure and fair” elections.
“With the support of our attorney general, we will defend these commonsense steps, that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us,” Youngkin said. “Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period.”
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Sarah Roderick-Fitch is The Center Square’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Editor. She has previously worked as an editor, and has been a contributing writer for several publications. In addition to writing and editing, Sarah spent nearly a decade working for non-profit, public policy organizations in the Washington, DC area.
