The Justice Department announced Friday that it is suing Virginia over its efforts to purge voter rolls within 90 days of an election, calling the state’s actions a violation of federal voting laws.
The suit comes about two months after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order requiring the state’s Department of Elections to conduct daily updates to its voting list, including comparing the list of identified “noncitizens” to the state’s existing list of registered voters.
Local officials are required to notify people found on both lists that their voter registration will be canceled if they fail to respond to the notice and affirm their citizenship within 14 days. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.
According to the Justice Department, some of the people identified as noncitizens have US citizenship, leading to some voter registrations being canceled unnecessarily.
“The Commonwealth’s unlawful actions here have likely confused, deterred, and removed US citizens who are fully eligible to vote — the very scenario that Congress tried to prevent when it enacted the Quiet Period Provision,” the DOJ said in its suit, referring to the purging of voter rolls within 90 days of Election Day.
During a previous effort to purge voter rolls of noncitizens in Virginia’s Prince William County, which took place before July, 43 of the 162 people identified as noncitizens were US citizens, according to the Justice Department’s lawsuit.
In a statement, Youngkin called the lawsuit “politically motivated” and a “desperate attempt” to attack the election’s legitimacy.
“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, an ally of former President Donald Trump.
Trump weighed in on the suit Friday by praising Youngkin and claiming that the Justice Department and Vice President Kamala Harris were seeking to undermine democracy.
“We must protect American voters, and protect America’s democracy!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.
Virginia’s Department of Elections, which is named in the suit, declined to comment, saying it does not comment on pending litigation.
The state’s elections commissioner, who is also named, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening.
This is the second DOJ lawsuit in the past month against a state for alleged violations of a provision of the National Voter Registration Act that says that, while states have the prerogative to clean their voter rolls for various reasons, they cannot conduct systematic removals so close to a federal election as those predominantly affected are often naturalized Americans.
The DOJ south of the State of Alabama in September over alleged violations of the so-called Quiet Provision.
Virginia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 2004. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, recently visited the state to survey Hurricane Helene damage with Youngkin.
In the state’s Senate race, Sen. Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, is facing a challenge from Republican nominee Hung Cao in a state that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as a solid Democrat race.
The Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights filed his own lawsuit against Youngkin on Monday, alleging the process to purge voters was illegal, discriminatory and error-ridden.
Monica Sarmiento, the executive director of the organization, praised the DOJ lawsuit in a statement Friday, saying the executive order Youngkin signed had “disenfranchised hundreds if not thousands” of eligible voters on the eve of an election.
“The Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights applauds the Department of Justice for joining in challenging Virginia’s unlawful citizenship purge program,” Sarmiento said.
Gary Grumbach and Jillian Frankel contributed.
