"It's incredibly disappointing that a judge would even consider the idea that noncitizens need to be forced back onto the rolls to have citizen privileges, which is to vote. "The Youngkin administration has said they are going to appeal it right away, so we're hopeful that a higher court would in fact overrule this. But I think it does heighten everyone's awareness … and understanding that we need to have a better immigration system so that we don't have widespread election problems in addition to other things. "What people don't want is an election result that they then have to question because the process was not clean in advance of [that election]. I do hope the court steps in here … in advance of when we get to the voting booths on Election Day." Victoria Cobb, president |
U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the Biden Justice Department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.
Thomas Sanford, an attorney with the Virginia attorney general's office, told the judge at the conclusion of Friday's hearing that the state intends to appeal her ruling.
Giles said Friday that the state is not completely prohibited from removing noncitizens from the voting rolls during the 90-day quiet period, but that it must do so on an individualized basis rather than the automated, systematic program employed by the state.
State officials argued unsuccessfully that the canceled registrations followed careful procedures that targeted people who explicitly identified themselves as noncitizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the state, said during arguments Thursday that the federal law was never intended to provide protections to noncitizens, who by definition can't vote in federal elections.
“Congress couldn't possibly have intended to prevent the removal ... of persons who were never eligible to vote in the first place,” Cooper argued.
Cooper acknowledged that some of the 1,600 voters identified by the state as noncitizens may well be citizens, but he said restoring all of them to the rolls means that in all likelihood "there's going to hundreds of noncitizens back on those rolls. If a noncitizen votes, it cancels out a legal vote. And that is a harm," he said.
He also said that with the election less than two weeks away, it's too late to impose the burden of restoring registrations on busy election workers, and said the plaintiffs who filed their lawsuits roughly two weeks ago should have taken action sooner.
Virginia's Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, issued an executive order in August requiring daily checks of DMV data against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.
State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.
In media interviews, Youngkin has questioned the Justice Department’s motives for filing the lawsuit.
“How can I as a governor allow noncitizens to be on the voter roll?” Youngkin asked rhetorically during an appearance of Fox News Sunday.
Virginia's Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, issued a statement after Friday's hearing, criticizing the ruling.
“It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter,” he said. “Yet, today a Court – urged by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice – ordered Virginia to put the names of non-citizens back on the voter rolls, mere days before a presidential election. The Department of Justice pulled this shameful, politically motivated stunt 25 days before Election Day, challenging a Virginia process signed into law 18 years ago by a Democrat governor and approved by the Department of Justice in 2006.”
