Federal judge halts Virginia voter purge before November 5

A federal judge in Virginia suspended the state’s ban on Friday removal of suspected foreigners from voter rolls and ordered the reinstatement of those who had been removed due to the proximity of the November 5 elections.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles issued the ruling: executive order by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed on August 7 violated federal law prohibiting the removal of names from voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Voters who were removed after that date must be notified and have their registration restored, Giles ruled.

“This ruling is a major victory,” said Ryan Snow, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented interest groups in the joint lawsuit with a similar lawsuit filed by the Justice Department. “Judge Stops Virginia’s Scandalous Mass Purge of Eligible Voters.”

Another federal court recently issued a similar ruling blocking Alabama’s voter removal program.

Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said he would appeal Friday’s decision.

“Removing an illegal voter should never be illegal,” Miyares said in a statement. “Yet today, the Court – under pressure from the Biden-Harris Department of Justice – ordered Virginia to put the names of noncitizens back on the voter rolls, just days before the presidential election.”

In a statement, Youngkin said a judge ordered the state to restore the voter registration of 1,500 people who identified themselves as foreigners on the motor vehicle registry.

Voting rights advocates say citizenship affidavits can be decades old and voters have been able to become naturalized citizens since then. Aaron Baird, a spokesman for the advocacy group Project Democracy, whose lawyers represented plaintiffs in the case, said there are protections in place to prevent noncitizens from voting.

“Voting crimes are extremely rare in Virginia and there is no evidence that non-citizens have been prosecuted for voting in the last 20 years,” Baird said.

The GOP is fighting to block non-citizen voters, but research shows no widespread problem

Republicans did it fight against foreigners voting important issue. However, research has shown that the problem is irrelevant.

Research according to Brennan Center for Justice and libertarian Cato Institute they discovered that voting by foreigners was essentially non-existent. In 2016, the Brennan Center investigated 42 jurisdictions and uncovered 30 cases of suspected voters out of 23.5 million votes cast. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, announced this on Wednesday the state conducted an audit and found that out of 8.2 million registered voters, 20 were foreigners – whose voter registrations were canceled.

Since 2006, Virginia has had a law — enforced by Republican and Democratic administrations — that calls for the removal of any voter who identified himself as a foreign national when filling out state vehicle registration records and then accidentally or intentionally became registered to vote.

Youngkin reinforced this policy with his own executive order for daily records audits between voter registration lists and motor vehicle registers. However, the federal Voter Registration Act of 1993, called the “Voter Voter” Act, intended to make registration easier, prohibited removing names from voter rolls before an election to avoid confusion or unfair removal of people.

What were the arguments in this case?

Government lawyers argued that a federal court should not overturn the state’s long-standing policy for the same reason – it is too close to the election to restore registration for suspected foreign nationals. The state said voters were only removed if they voluntarily declared themselves alien, were notified by mail that their registration had been canceled and did not object to the removal by verifying their citizenship within 14 days.

“Virginia’s litigation process is individualized, nondiscriminatory, thorough and lawful,” state attorneys wrote in their legal brief.

But The Justice Department joined the groups including the Immigrant Rights Coalition, African Communities and the League of Women Voters to fight Youngkin’s executive order. The groups argued that motor vehicle records could be 20 years out of date, that naturalized citizens could be improperly removed, and that citizens with similar names and dates of birth as foreigners could mistakenly lose their registration.

Advocacy groups quoted Prince William County Clerk Eric Olsen as saying that at a Sept. 30 board of elections meeting, his office checked 162 people listed in the state computer system as noncitizens and found that 43 had voted early. However, his office checked and found that all 43 people had confirmed their citizenship, some even five times, but were still removed from the voter rolls.

“The available evidence further demonstrates that Defendants’ system is particularly flawed and riddled with errors,” the advocacy groups wrote in the legal filing.

A federal judge in Alabama rejected a similar program to that in Virginia

The decision in Virginia came after U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco rejected a similar program in Alabama.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen made the announcement on August 13 identified 3,251 state-registered voters who were issued non-citizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security and announced that they would be removed from the voter rolls. Allen acknowledged that some naturalized citizens could be removed.

Several advocacy groups, including the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, the League of Alabama Women Voters and the NAACP State Conference, filed a lawsuit on September 13 to block Allen’s program. The Department of Justice filed a similar lawsuit on September 27 and the cases were consolidated.

“The court had ‘no difficulty’ in finding irreparable harm to the Alabamians targeted by this program,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, which helped argue the case. “The court found that this was not a ‘no harm, no foul’ violation and will issue an injunction immediately.”