Federal judge halts pre-election purges of Virginia voter rolls targeting suspected foreigners

A federal judge on Friday halted a Virginia program to purge the state’s voter rolls based on indications that a person may be a foreign national and ordered officials to restore the registration of about 1,600 people who were purged in the process.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, an appointee of President Joe Biden, does not give noncitizens the right to vote.

Giles tends to side with the Biden administration and others in stating that Virginia’s program violated federal law that prohibits the systematic removal of voters from voter rolls 90 days before a federal election.

“If it has to be done within 90 days, it has to be done on a case-by-case basis,” she said Friday. Virginia’s approach “left no room for individualized inquiry.” The judge noted that the challengers also presented evidence that citizens were wrongly removed from rolls under Virginia’s systems.

At Giles’ direction, election officials are to send notices to 1,600 people informing them that their registration will be restored. These letters will also include information that non-Virginians are not eligible to vote in Virginia.

Former President Donald Trump complained about the Truth Social ruling, claiming that “the armed ‘Injustice’ Department and a judge (appointed by Joe) ORDERED the Greater Commonwealth of Virginia TO BRING BACK NON-CIVIL ELECTIONS TO THE CALLS.” “

State officials immediately appealed the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Trump wrote in his Truth Social post that “let’s hope the U.S. Supreme Court fixes this!”

On Friday evening, Virginia officials asked the appeals court to issue an emergency order staying the trial judge’s ruling. The appeals court ordered the Justice Department and private plaintiffs to respond by 1 p.m. Saturday.

Virginia is asking the appeals court to hear the emergency appeal by Monday.

The ruling comes after the Department of Justice prevailed in a similar case brought against Alabama over its 90-day purge program. When Giles announced her ruling Friday, state attorneys asked her to hold off on appealing, expressing concern that potential non-citizens could be reinstated on the rolls.

The judge rejected this argument: “I don’t deal with faith. I’m dealing with evidence.”

The alleged threat of foreigners voting in the 2024 elections is a fixation of Trump and Republicans. However, documented cases of non-citizens voting are extremely rare; a recent audit in Georgia of 8.2 million people on the voter rolls found only 20 registered foreigners, of whom only nine voted.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, praised his state’s efforts to clear foreigners in an August executive order — right as the 90-day window began — and promised the program would continue and take even more aggressive steps to remove suspected foreigners.

Under the program, if a person notifies the Department of Motor Vehicles through the checkbox that he or she is a non-citizen or the Department of Motor Vehicles has other information indicating non-citizenship, Virginia elections officials send the person a notice with two weeks to confirm your citizenship or cancel your registration. The program requires election officials to continue sending notices and initiating the purge process for individuals, even if they have other information indicating that those voters are, in fact, citizens. Naturalized citizens may sometimes be incorrectly flagged as suspicious foreigners due to outdated government records.

Youngkin criticized the judge’s ruling Friday and said the state would ask the Supreme Court to overturn it “if necessary.”

“Let us be clear about what just happened: Just eleven days before the presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate more than 1,500 people on the voter rolls who identified themselves as foreign nationals,” the governor said in a statement, which said: He did not address the evidence that that those entitled to vote were also removed.

During a daylong hearing Thursday, Charles Cooper, a Virginia attorney, argued that purges focusing on foreigners are not covered by the quiet period imposed by the National Voter Registration Act and that Virginia’s procedures are not the type of “systematic” program covered by federal law.

He also pointed to opportunities Virginia offers citizens to correct false positives, which also include the ability to re-register at a polling place on Election Day.

On Friday, Giles said that allowing wrongfully cleared people to temporarily vote would not be enough to save the program.

The state’s actions, she said, “restricted the right of eligible voters to cast ballots in the same manner as other eligible voters.”

Virginia opponents also argued that same-day registration would not solve the problem of removed eligible voters who wanted to vote by absentee ballot.

Brent Ferguson, representing immigrant and voting rights activists who filed a lawsuit over the expulsion program, said Thursday that based on a list of purged voters provided to challengers earlier this week, his team has already identified 18 citizens who were unfairly passed over. REMOVED .

This story has been updated with additional events.

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