CNN —
The Biden administration on Friday sued Virginia election officials, saying it violates federal law to exclude potential noncitizen voters during the so-called quiet period before an election. During this period, election authorities are prohibited from systematically removing voters from registration rolls.
The lawsuit followed a similar Justice Department challenge to Alabama officials’ move to begin removing voters from the voter rolls. Republicans have made the threat of non-citizens a central focus of their 2024 campaign, but instances of non-citizens voting are extremely rare.
In a court filing Friday, the Justice Department said Virginia’s purge program, formalized by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in an August executive order, is a mass voter removal program that must be implemented up to 90 days before an election. It said it violates the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement to complete it. .
Yonkin’s executive order was issued just 90 days before the election, but the Justice Department has since noted signs that removals under the order are continuing.
The executive order directed local election officials to begin removing voters who indicated on their DMV forms that they were noncitizens. Those voters will be sent a mailing and will have 14 days to confirm their citizenship or cancel their registration.
The Justice Department alleges in its lawsuit that previous iterations of the program removed resident candidates from the rolls, and that an examination of dozens of voters purged under the program’s terms found that many of them repeatedly verified citizenship, including for those with Social Security numbers.
The lawsuit states that local election officials have no discretion under the program to prevent the cancellation of voters who fail to return their notifications, even if the agency has reason to believe that the voter is a U.S. citizen. Ta.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Youngkin accused the Biden administration of “filing an unprecedented lawsuit” less than 30 days before the election.
“Virginians, and Americans, will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American democracy,” Youngkin said, adding that at the same time policy promised to defend.
