Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals at an Election Day news conference in Richmond on Nov. 5, 2024. (Markus Schmidt/Virginia Mercury)
Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals confirmed Tuesday that no voters have been removed from the state’s voter rolls under Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order since Oct. 15 — the deadline for Virginians to register to vote online or apply for absentee ballots.
“I think the figure that has been out there is the figure that stands, there has not been any additional work done on that,” Beals said at an Election Day news conference at Richmond’s Capitol Square, referring to 1,600 individuals purged under Youngkin’s directive since August.
“The last time that records were sent to registrars was October 14th, which is the close of books, and … that’s normally when we close out our maintenance practices,” Beals said.
The pause in removals comes amid a high-profile legal battle over the state’s efforts to manage its voter rolls. The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay last week on a lower court’s ruling that would have required the commonwealth to restore the voting rights of the 1,600 removed Virginians.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares had already acknowledged the end of a voter purge in a court filing from Oct. 22, without providing a date for the cut-off.
“The defendants have already ceased their allegedly unlawful removal process, as they always planned to do, which means there is no ongoing alleged violation,” the filing said.
And the Youngkin administration has not said publicly that they were no longer removing individuals from the rolls — even after last week’s Supreme Court ruling.
Youngkin’s order had instructed the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to send records of people thought to be non-citizens to local election registrars for potential removal.
However, the order’s timeline became a point of contention, with critics arguing it led to eligible voters being mistakenly removed too close to Election Day, a violation of the so-called 90-day quiet period before an election, which is mandated by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
Beals on Tuesday pushed back against allegations that Youngkin’s order prevented some citizens from exercising their right to vote.
“First, in Virginia, we want every eligible voter to vote in this election,” she said.
Beals underscored that the removal process has been in place since 2006, when the law was signed by then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat.
“It has been managed and processed the exact same way by every administration since 2006 when the law was enacted. Nothing has changed in the way that that process is managed by the department,” she said.
According to Beals, the DMV sends information to the Department of Elections, where it is checked against the department’s list of registered voters. For any voters who marked on their DMV paperwork that they are not U.S. citizens, their information is forwarded to local registrars, who then send notifications by mail to these individuals, informing them they may be at risk of removal from the voter rolls, unless they provide proof of citizenship within 14 days.
“If they return the form, nothing happens to the voter, (but) if they fail to return the form after 14 days, they are sent an additional notice where they are advised that they are being canceled because of non-citizenships status,” Beals said.
“Anyone who is canceled for non-citizenship status and feels as though it is in error can go to their polling location today on election day and same-day-register to vote and cast a ballot in this election.”
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