A federal judge on Friday ordered Virginia to return to its voter rolls names that were recently purged, including many who may not be citizens.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, an appointee of President Joe Biden, issued the four-page order instructing Virginia to cease any systemic program to remove names from the rolls fewer than 90 days before the election, restore almost all the names already removed and inform individuals who were removed that they’ve been reinstated.
“For the reasons stated in open court, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have established the four elements of the Winter test for preliminary injunctive relief,” the judge said in the order.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced in August an executive order that streamlined the voter rolls in his state.
Giles’ decision came after the Justice Department sued Virginia under a federal law barring states from removing names from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. State officials said they would file an emergency appeal.
Youngkin, a Republican, criticized the order, saying it would reinstate individuals deemed ineligible to vote to the rolls a short time before Election Day.
“Let’s be clear about what just happened: only eleven days before a Presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals — who self-identified themselves as noncitizens — back onto the voter rolls,” Youngkin said in a statement. “Almost all these individuals had previously presented immigration documents confirming their noncitizen status, a fact recently verified by federal authorities.”
Among the plaintiffs in the case were the Virginia Coalition of Immigrant Rights, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and African Communities Together.
“No one should mess with a citizen’s right to vote,” Ryan Snow, counsel with the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “The judge stopped the outrageous mass purge of eligible voters in Virginia.”
The order comes amid a national conversation over right-wing claims that state officials are letting undocumented migrants register to vote in an effort to impact the result of the 2024 election. They note the presence of noncitizens on voting rolls, estimated by officials to be in the thousands in some states.
Many of the assertions have been discredited as overblown or without basis in reality. Critics say there are criminal penalties for noncitizens who vote in federal elections.
The state of Georgia said Wednesday that it came up with only 20 noncitizens registered to vote in its review of the rolls.
Youngkin said Virginia would petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to reverse the order and take up the case with the U.S. Supreme Court if needed for an emergency stay.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares echoed that view in a statement, then added that the actions demonstrate the Biden administration has weaponized the Justice Department.
“More concerning is the open practice by the Biden-Harris administration to weaponize the legal system against the enemies of so-called progress,” Miyares said. “That is the definition of lawfare. To openly choose weaponization over good process and lawfare over integrity isn’t democracy: it’s bullying, pure and simple, and I always stand up to bullies.”
The post Federal judge orders Virginia to reinstate names purged from voting rolls, including noncitizens appeared first on Roll Call.
