Virginia asks US Supreme Court to reinstate expungement of 1,600 voter registrations

WASHINGTON– Virginia on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to remove from its rolls about 1,600 voters it considers noncitizens.

The request comes after a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a federal judge order restore the records of those 1,600 voters, who the judge said were illegally removed from the rolls under an executive order by the state’s Republican governor.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he ordered the daily expulsions in an effort to prevent noncitizens from voting.

But on Friday, U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles said Youngkin’s program was illegal under federal law because it systematically purged voters during a 90-day “quiet period” before the November election.

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued to block Youngkin’s program elimination program earlier this month. They argued that the quiet period exists to ensure that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls due to bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that cannot be rectified in a timely manner.

Youngkin said he was simply defending a state law that requires Virginia to deregister noncitizens.

On Sunday, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the judge who ordered the restoration of voter records.

The appeals court said Virginia is wrong to say it is being forced to restore 1,600 noncitizens to the voter rolls. Instead, the appeals court ruled that Virginia’s process for removing voters did not establish any evidence that those purged were actually noncitizens.

Youngkin’s executive order, issued in August, required daily checks of Department of Motor Vehicles data against voter lists to identify noncitizens.

State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to challenge their disqualification before being expelled. If they returned a form proving their citizenship, their registration would not be cancelled.

The plaintiffs said that as a result of the program, a legitimate voter and citizen could have their registration canceled simply by checking the wrong box on a DMV form. The plaintiffs presented evidence showing that at least some of those expelled were actually citizens.

A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week he ordered the state to restore the eligibility of more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that approximately 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who became inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

The opinion was written by Toby Heytens, a Biden appointee, and joined by Chief Judge Albert Diaz and Judge Stephanie Thacker, both Obama appointees.

The panel emphasized, as Giles did in his initial ruling, that the state has the right to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, even during the 90-day silent period, but must do so in an individualized process rather than a systematic process that relies on DMV data transfers.

Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.