A federal judge ordered Virginia on Friday to stop removing potential non-citizens. This decision is expected to restore voting rights for about 1,600 residents before Election Day.
U.S. Judge Patricia Giles issued an injunction on Friday to restore all voters who had been removed from the state voter rolls of the state within the past 90 days. She found that the removals were “systematic” and not individual that violated federal law.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Virginia for its voter registration program just a few weeks ago, alleging that the removals had been conducted too close to elections on Nov. 5 and in violation of the National Voter Registration Act. This federal law requires states to stop all systematic voter list maintenance during a “quiet” period of 90 days before an election.
Justice Department officials expressed concern that some eligible votes could have been incorrectly removed from the voting rolls without sufficient notice or time to correct any mistakes.
In their lawsuit filed on October 11, DOJ officials stated that states may remove names in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. However, they cannot continue this type of systematic removal so close to an election.
Injunctions that support this way of thinking are likely to meet with fierce opposition from Governors. Glen Youngkin has insisted that the voters were removed legally and he has objected to court rulings less than two weeks before a federal election.
The issue is a Youngkin executive order from August, which authorized the state’s “daily updates” to its voter lists.
The state could compare the non-citizens’ list from its Department of Motor Vehicles with its voter list. The state informed those without citizenship that their voter registrations would be canceled unless they could prove their citizenship within 14 days.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin insists that the voters were legally removed and cites a precedent set by a state law passed in 2006, which was signed into law by the then-Gov. Tim Kaine is a Democrat.
Youngkin, speaking on “Fox News Sunday”, defended the system of the state and claimed it was not “systematic.”
He said that instead, the system uses an “individualized procedure” to determine potential non-citizens and inform them they have been added to the voter registration list and will be removed without further action.
He said: “To be clear, it is not a purge.”
