Justice Dept. Wins Injunction Against Virginia Voter Purge
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Justice Department won a first-round victory Friday in its lawsuit against the state of Virginia over efforts by its election officials to delete registrations of voters they consider ineligible.
The lawsuit says the Virginia State Board of Elections is violating a National Voter Registration Act provision banning the removal of ineligible voters from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election.
The lawsuit also says some voters removed from the lists are U.S. citizens who should be allowed to vote in the Nov. 5 election.
“By canceling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement when the lawsuit was filed two weeks ago in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
The lawsuit is one example of a flurry of last-minute legal maneuvering nationwide to avoid the kind of controversy surrounding the 2020 presidential election.
Former President Donald Trump said the Justice Department is trying to help illegal immigrants participate in the election in Virginia. Justice Department officials deny the accusation.
At a hearing in the case Friday, attorneys for the Board of Elections argued they removed about 1,600 registrations of people who identified themselves to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles as being noncitizens.
The federal judge overseeing the case was unconvinced their procedure was proper. He issued an injunction ordering the Board of Elections to restore the voter registrations after the state residents’ names were purged from the list weeks earlier.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he would appeal the ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals “immediately.”
Virginia officials said they drew authority from a 2006 Justice Department memo that ordered states to remove noncitizens from voter rolls.
The Justice Department lawsuit followed an executive order Youngkin signed in August requiring strict procedures for election security, such as testing of voting machines and checks on voter registration lists.
After the court’s decision Friday, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a statement that “it should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter.”
He added, “The Department of Justice pulled this shameful, politically motivated stunt 25 days before Election Day, challenging a Virginia process signed into law 18 years ago by a Democrat governor and approved by the Department of Justice in 2006.”
Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.
Trump called the lawsuit a “weaponization” of the Biden administration’s Justice Department.
“Obviously, this was done so that they can CHEAT on the Election,” Trump wrote on social media.
A similar dispute is taking place this week in Iowa but no lawsuit has been filed over it.
The Iowa secretary of state said a review by his office found 87 residents who identified to the Department of Transportation that they were noncitizens but who voted in previous elections. Another 67 people who are not citizens were registered to vote.
“For those groups, we have pretty clear evidence … that they voted or registered to vote when they are not citizens, which is, of course, a Class D felony,” an Iowa secretary of state statement said.
In Georgia this week, the state Supreme Court blocked new voting rules — such as double checking ballots with hand counts — from taking effect for the Nov. 5 election. The lawsuit continues over the rules for later elections.
In Nevada last week, a federal judge dismissed a Republican National Committee lawsuit that said voter registrations in the state were “impossibly high” to be realistic. The judge said the plaintiffs offered no “concrete specifics” of wrongdoing.
In Nebraska last week, the state Supreme Court ruled convicted felons who served their sentences can vote. Some state officials tried to bar them.
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