Voting sign at Rivers Edge Elementary School in Henrico County, Nov. 7, 2023. (Photo by Parker Michels-Boyce/Virginia Mercury)
On Friday morning, a federal judge ruled in favor of plaintiffs challenging a Virginia program that has removed more than 1,600 people from voter rolls since August, following an executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. This means that people can be reinstated on voter rolls for the time being.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state and Youngkin administration for allegedly removing voters too close to the 90-day “quiet period” before Election Day. Voter rights and immigrant advocacy groups filed a similar suit, alleging that people affected by the purges are those whose Department of Motor Vehicles paperwork doesn’t indicate they are U.S. citizens because some of them may have become citizens in the time since renewing or receiving their license, while others may have made a blunder on their paperwork.
That case, brought by Virginia’s League of Women Voters and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrants Rights, was the basis of Friday’s ruling.
Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles also ordered the state to work with local registrars to send letters to affected people within five days.
“Let’s be clear about what just happened: only eleven days before a Presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals — who self-identified themselves as noncitizens — back onto the voter rolls,” Youngkin said in a statement Friday.
State law directs the DMV to send monthly lists of people who failed to identify as citizens to the state Board of Elections, which are further forwarded to local registrars. It was carried by former Republican state Sen. Ken Cucinelli before it was signed by then-gov Tim Kaine, a Democrat.
In defense of the process, Youngkin has stressed that a Democratic governor signed the law and he is simply employing it.
“Today’s injunction on Executive Order 35 is an essential step to have fair and just elections that will permit naturalized citizens to cast their vote in our federal elections without the unfair burden of being forced to re-register,” Jorge Figueredo at Edu-Futuro, an executive board member of the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, one of the groups suing the state, said in a statement.
Attorney General Jason Miyares alleged Giles was “urged” by the DOJ to reinstate the removed registrations and called the lawsuits a “shameful, politically motivated stunt.”
Both he and Youngkin noted that the state will petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and be prepared to take their case to the U.S. Court, if needed.
This story first appeared in the Virginia Mercury, a member with the Phoenix in the nonprofit States Newsroom.