Voters who want to vote early line up outside the Elena Bozeman Government Center as polling places open on September 20, 2024, in Arlington, Virginia.
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A federal judge on Friday blocked Virginia from purging its voter rolls of so-called noncitizens and ordered the state to reinstate the identities of more than 1,600 people who had been struck off the rolls.
Judge Patricia Giles Her ruling agreed with the U.S. argument Ministry of Justicewhich means that the clear command is Governor Glenn Youngkin The August 7 announcement came too close to Election Day.
federal law States are prohibited from systematically removing voters from their electoral rolls within 90 days of an election.
The state immediately vowed to appeal Giles’ ruling, which was handed down less than two weeks before Election Day in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, when Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump Trump is vying for the White House.
Youngkin’s order requires election officials to remove from the voter rolls people who indicate on a Department of Motor Vehicles form that they are not a U.S. citizen or leave that portion of the form blank.
The U.S. Department of Justice said in a court filing that 43 people removed from the electoral rolls in Prince William County may be U.S. citizens, and attorneys confirmed earlier this week that 18 U.S. citizens were removed from the voter rolls.
“How many more?” Giles asked during Friday’s hearing.
Giles said it was “no accident” that Youngkin issued an executive order cleaning up the voter rolls 90 days before Election Day.
She rejected a request to halt the ruling, although Virginia’s attorney, Charles Cooper, said “hundreds of non-citizens will be added back to these lists.”
“Every time a non-citizen casts his vote, it nullifies a legitimate vote,” Cooper said.
“Let’s be clear about what just happened: Just 11 days before the presidential election, a federal judge ordered the state of Virginia to reinstate the status of more than 1,500 individuals who claimed to be noncitizens,” Youngkin said in a statement after Giles’ ruling. .
“Nearly all of these individuals had previously presented immigration documents confirming their non-citizen status, a fact recently confirmed by federal authorities,” the governor said.
“Virginia will immediately petition the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the ban,” Younkin said.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case, which include the Virginia Immigrant Rights Alliance, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and the African Community Alliance, praised Giles’ decision.
“This ruling is a major victory,” said Ryan Snow, an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. “All eligible voters who were mistakenly purged from the electoral rolls can now vote. No one should interfere with citizens’ right to vote.
“The judge halted a brazen mass purge of eligible voters in Virginia,” Snow said. “The judge carefully considered the extensive records presented by the plaintiffs in a very short period of time and found that Virginia’s purge plan clearly violated the National Voter Registration Act. Law”.”
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