The Justice Department is suing Virginia election officials over their recent efforts to cancel voter registrations. They claim their actions violate a federal law that prohibits purging voter rolls so close to the election.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, accuses the Virginia State Board of Elections and Virginia’s election commissioner of violating the silent period provision of the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to implement the removal of ineligible voters from voter rolls no later than 90 days before the elections. federal elections. Additionally, the Justice Department claims that some voters removed from the rolls are in fact U.S. citizens.
“The Commonwealth’s unlawful actions here have likely confused, deterred, and removed U.S. citizens who are fully eligible to vote – the very scenario Congress sought to prevent when it enacted the Quiet Period Provision,” the Justice Department said in its court case.
Election officials in Virginia began creating a program to make daily updates to the state’s voter rolls after Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order in August. The governor, who has parroted Donald Trump’s baseless claims about noncitizen voting, has framed the program as an effort to strengthen election security, even as voting rights groups say such efforts disproportionately affect naturalized citizens.
The DOJ is seeking a court order to reinstate eligible voters on the voter rolls and prevent future violations of the silent period provision. “By canceling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters at risk of delisting and risks confusion among the electorate,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement.
Youngkin called the lawsuit “a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of Virginia elections.”
It is rare and already illegal for non-citizens to vote in US elections. Still, claims of widespread “non-citizen voting” have taken hold among Republicans, as Trump and his allies push their supporters to deny a potential loss in November.
A handful of Republican Party-led states have similarly purged people from their voter rolls in what they have characterized as a crackdown on noncitizen voting. Alabama is also facing a lawsuit from the Justice Department for removing more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls during the 90-day period leading up to the election. In his August statement announcing the removal of registered voters who had once been issued non-citizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen acknowledged that some of the people his office removed from voter rolls removed, can now be naturalized citizens. and entitled to vote.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
