The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Friday against Virginia election officials, accusing them of wrongfully striking names from voter rolls.
In August, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order that required daily updates to voter lists, aiming to remove ineligible voters. The suit invokes the National Voter Registration Act, which requires a 90-day “quiet period” before elections regarding voter rolls.
“As the National Voter Registration Act mandates, officials across the country should take heed of the law’s crystal clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“By cancelling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate.”
The Justice Department released a statement on Friday saying it “seeks injunctive relief that would restore the ability of impacted eligible voters to vote unimpeded on Election Day and would prohibit future quiet period violations.”
The lawsuit also claims that Youngkin’s order relies on Department of Motor Vehicles data that could be inaccurate and that officials have failed to take “additional steps to verify a person’s purported noncitizen status before mailing them a notice of canceling their voter eligibility,” according to the Associated Press.
The Washington Post reported that the executive order involved comparing lists of people identified as noncitizens by the DMV to lists of people who had already registered to vote.
Yet the Virginia governor stands by his election-integrity efforts.
“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,” Youngkin said of the case.
Youngkin has joined with former president Donald Trump on their concern over noncitizens voting in federal elections. The governor reported that he has already removed more than 6,000 noncitizens from voter rolls during his time in office.
“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,” he said. “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.”