A group of Virginia voting rights groups filed a federal lawsuit this week against GOP Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s recent efforts to purge supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls just before the election, using what plaintiffs argue is unreliable information from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The Youngkin effort — which plaintiffs argue is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act and risks purging eligible voters from the rolls — also serves as another misleading datapoint for Republicans’ false narrative that non-citizens are voting en masse on behalf of Democrats, as they set themselves up to cry voter fraud if Donald Trump loses the upcoming election.
“It absolutely fits within the broader narrative that is being spun,” Ryan Snow, counsel with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and co-counsel for the petitioners in this case, said in an interview with TPM. “All evidence that exists suggests that it is vanishingly rare for someone who’s not a citizen to vote, and that the vast majority of people who become registered to vote do so accidentally, for example at the DMV by checking the wrong box.”
Anna Dorman, counsel at Protect Democracy and co-counsel for the plaintiffs, similarly told TPM: “They are an exercise in muddying the waters and preemptively coming up with excuses in case the election results don’t go their way to try to undermine the results of our election and potentially infringe upon a peaceful transition of power.”
On August 7, Youngkin signed Executive Order 35, which removed over 6,000 alleged non-citizens from the voter rolls, and also announced the state’s new program designed to purge supposed non-citizens from the rolls. The order, however, as previously reported by TPM, does not specify whether Youngkin’s office checked the current status of the over 6,000 people removed to confirm that they had indeed not become naturalized citizens since errantly registering to vote.
The executive order requires the Department of Elections to send only a single notice to those who may be removed from the rolls. And, according to the order, the Department of Elections is not required to verify the accuracy of the DMV information.
TPM also previously reached out to Youngkin’s office about the details of these 6,000-plus removals, but was not given much information in terms of specifics.
The effort to remove supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls is ongoing. Youngkin’s executive order increased the frequency in which the DMV is required to share data with the Department of Elections. The order also requires that local election officials generate a “daily file of all non-citizen transactions, including addresses and document numbers.”
The plaintiffs, which include the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and the League of Women Voters of Virginia Education Fund, are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the ongoing purge of voters so close to the November presidential election.
“There may be a lot of people out there who are now citizens that are being purged, and they only give you 14 days to respond,” said Joan Porte, president of the League of Women Voters of Virginia.
According to the National Voter Registration Act, no voter cancellation or systematic list maintenance program can occur within 90 days of an election. These purges are ongoing and a direct violation of the 90 day time frame, the complaint says. Aside from violating the NVRA, the lawsuit also argues that the program itself is an “illegal, discriminatory, and error-ridden program that has directed the cancellation of voter registrations of naturalized U.S. citizens and jeopardizes the rights of countless others.”
“It’s relying on data that is fundamentally unreliable and even demonstrably inaccurate in some cases,” Snow said.
And the program, according to the lawsuit, disproportionately targets non-citizens. In Virginia, a driver’s license is valid for eight years. This means that it’s actually possible to obtain a license as a non-citizen, and then within that eight-year period, become a citizen without ever having to obtain an updated license. The concern, then, is that eligible voters are erroneously being kicked off the voter rolls and disenfranchised based on outdated DMV information.
“The State knows or should know that countless individuals who obtained drivers’ licenses while legal permanent residents have become naturalized citizens, many even registering to vote during naturalization ceremonies,” the lawsuit argues. “But Defendants make no effort to conduct any individualized analysis.”
As TPM has repeatedly reported, there is simply no evidence to suggest that non-citizen voting en masse is a real issue. The perpetuation of this myth this election cycle is simply a way to sow seeds of doubt and inject chaos into the election system.
The lawsuit comes against the backdrop of a similar legal challenge in Alabama. In August, Alabama’s Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) also announced the implementation of a new process to remove supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls. Last month, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Allen and the state of Alabama, arguing that the state’s voter purge program is in violation of the NVRA.
