“I Voted” stickers are displayed at a Richmond polling place during the 2022 midterm elections. (Graham Moomaw/Virginia Mercury)
Lynchburg resident Nadra Wilson was trying to be proactive this summer by renewing her driver’s license months ahead of its December expiration. As a longtime voter and Virginia resident of almost a decade, she never suspected she would be removed from the state’s voter rolls due to a paperwork error and caught up in a voter purge program that has booted 1,600 from voter lists and drawn two lawsuits.
When people fail to indicate citizenship status on Department of Motor Vehicles paperwork, that information used to be sent monthly to the Department of Elections to send to local registrars, who sort it out with people. Now, under Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 35, that information is sent daily. Registrars send notice to impacted voters, who receive it by mail and are supposed to respond within 14 days of its postmark.
It was surprising for Wilson to receive a letter informing her that she had to prove her U.S. citizenship or have her voter registration canceled. It was also frustrating, since the September-dated notification letter didn’t make it to her until October because it had previously been sent to an older address. By then, she had been purged from voter rolls.
“This is all very concerning,” she said.
Ultimately, she was able to go to her local registrar’s office to resolve matters and cast her vote early, but worries that others in her shoes may not have been able to do the same, in light of the ongoing lawsuits.
Youngkin’s order to ramp up voter data reports from the DMV to the State Department of Elections from monthly to daily fell within a 90-day “quiet period” in the federal National Voter Registration Act law. Two lawsuits challenged this in court.
U.S. Supreme Court grants stay in challenge to Youngkin’s voter purge order
Plaintiffs in the lawsuits and civil rights groups stressed that the purges affect both longtime citizens who’d made paperwork errors as well as those who’d become naturalized citizens since their last DMV visit.
After a federal court granted a preliminary injunction — ordering Youngkin’s administration to reinstate purged 1,600 voters and halt continued purges — the United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority granted Virginia Attorney General Jason Miayres’ request to block the lower court’s order.
Chesterfield County resident Rina Shaw, who’d also been briefly removed from rolls over paperwork errors like Wilson, said the situation has been “worrying for me.”
When obtaining her learner’s permit, she’d forgotten to indicate her citizenship status. After calling her local registrar her registration has been restored because “they said they had made a mistake” and she was able to vote last week, she explained.
She also disagrees with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the purge case.
“It’s like they basically threw out rules,” she said of the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period. “They were just like, you know, ‘to hell with that.’”
People who were caught up in the voter roll purge may utilize same-day registration and a provisional ballot to vote.
It’s what longtime Richmond resident Eric Terrell is going to do, although it won’t be as easy as the mail-in ballot he’d planned for due to his disabilities.
Though a lifelong Richmonder, he’d moved earlier this year into the senior living facility where he lives now. He’d also updated his address through the DMV and his mistake of not checking the citizenship box is what kicked him off the rolls. When his mail-in ballot never came, he’d reached out to local officials to learn what went wrong.
Terrell said that he was “highly pissed” when he found out, but he’s come to accept the situation. He plans to take an Uber to his polling location on Election Day and said that he’s grateful same-day registration exists to resolve the matter.
Though Wilson didn’t end up needing to take the same-day registration and provisional ballot route, she said that she’s glad others have that option.
Provisional ballots, another option for same-day registrants, are most often used in instances where someone forgot to bring their ID card or other form of identification, as well as when people utilize same-day voter registration. Virginia Public Access Project also has a tool to lookup a polling place based on someone’s address even if they aren’t technically registered yet.
Henrico County’s registrar Mark Coakley said that in most cases where provisional ballots are used, as long as people are able to show identification they don’t need to follow up with their registrar. Should someone decline the day of or not have identification on them at the time they vote, they can come back to their registrar’s office before noon on Friday.
U.S. Justice Department to monitor polling places in 27 states, including six Virginia localities
For provisional ballots, he said that registrars are able to research if someone is a citizen in order to count their ballot.
“If they were canceled or not registered, provisional ballots are a fail-safe method,” Coakley said.
In the meantime, he stressed that anyone voting on Election Day should remember “if you’re in line before 7 p.m., you will get to cast your ballot.”
The Department of Justice will be monitoring six Virginia localities on Election Day for possible voter rights violations and offering additional guidance for voters in the commonwealth and beyond.
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