The Biden-Harris Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Friday alleging that Virginia’s removal of noncitizens and other ineligible registrants from its voter rolls is illegal.
“The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and the Justice Department will continue to ensure that the rights of qualified voters are protected,” Kristen Clarke, the hyper-partisan head of the agency’s Civil Rights Division, contended in a melodramatic statement.
The suit comes in response to efforts by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) to ensure only eligible U.S. citizens are on the state’s voter registration lists.
In an August executive order directing commonwealth agencies to undertake election security efforts ahead of the November election, Youngkin revealed that ELECT had removed 6,303 noncitizens from Virginia’s voter rolls from January 2022 to July 2024. The directive also included instructions for ensuring accuracy within the state voter rolls.
In its lawsuit, the DOJ — which has regularly been weaponized to target Republican-led election integrity efforts since Joe Biden became president — alleged that the state’s removal of foreign nationals from its voter registration lists violated the “Quiet Period Provision” of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. That law requires states to complete “not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
The Justice Department claimed that the processes laid out in Youngkin’s executive order constitute such a “program” in violation of the NVRA’s Quiet Period Provision. The agency further contended this provision “applies to systemic programs intended to remove the names of ineligible voters based on failure to meet initial eligibility requirements—including citizenship — at the time of registration.”
“The Quiet Period Provision embodies Congress’s clear and considered judgment to restrict states from engaging in systematic processes aimed at removing the names of ineligible voters from the rolls in the final days before an election,” the lawsuit reads. “And for good reason: systematic removal programs are more error-prone than other forms of list maintenance, and eligible voters placed on the path to removal days or weeks before Election Day may be deterred from voting or unable to participate in the election on the same terms that they would have but for the Commonwealth’s error.”
“The Commonwealth’s unlawful actions here have likely confused, deterred, and removed U.S. citizens who are fully eligible to vote — the very scenario that Congress tried to prevent when it enacted the Quiet Period Provision,” it added.
[RELATED: Biden’s DOJ Threatens Election Offices: Cleaning Voter Rolls May Be ‘Discriminatory’]
In a Friday statement responding to the DOJ’s lawfare, Youngkin noted that the Biden-Harris administration is suing the commonwealth for “appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine that requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls — a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a non-citizen and then registering to vote.”
“Virginians — and Americans — will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” the governor said. “With the support of our Attorney General, we will defend these commonsense steps, that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us. Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period.”
The DOJ has asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Alexandria Division to declare the commonwealth in violation of the NVRA’s Quiet Period Provision and require Virginia and state election officials to “halt” its efforts to ensure clean voter rolls until after the November contest. The agency also requested the court to force Virginia to “restore to the voter rolls those U.S. citizens whose registration was cancelled” as a result of Youngkin’s order and provide notice to “affected U.S. citizens that they have been restored to the voter rolls.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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