Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is defending his state’s actions to take away non-citizens from voter rolls because the state finds itself within the crosshairs of the Division of Justice.
Youngkin appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to debate the DOJ’s lawsuit towards his state. Within the criticism, filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Japanese District of Virginia on Oct. 11, the DOJ underneath the Biden administration has argued that the state violated the Nationwide Voter Registration Act of 1993.
In accordance with the swimsuit, the regulation requires “states to complete systematic programs intended to remove the names of individual voters from registration lists based on failure to meet initial eligibility requirements by no later than 90 days before federal elections.” It cited an govt order signed by Youngkin 90 days earlier than the November election directing the state’s Commissioner of Elections to “certify” the presence of procedures to offer “Daily Updates to the Voter List.”
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“The ‘Daily Updates’ include [r]emov[ing] individuals who are unable to verify that they are citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles from the statewide voter registration list,” the DOJ added. “The ‘Daily Update’ also included compar[ing] the list of individuals who have been identified as non-citizens to the list of existing registered voters.”
The DOJ lists “citizenship” as considered one of a number of “initial eligibility requirements” lined by the Nationwide Voter Registration Act of 1993 and thereby maintains that the state is prohibited by regulation from partaking in “systematic programs” to get rid of non-citizens from the voter rolls inside 90 days of the election.
The lawsuit accommodates examples of Virginia counties eradicating voters decided to be ineligible from the voter rolls inside 90 days of the election, in addition to situations the place residents have been marked as non-citizens and faraway from the voter rolls. For his half, Youngkin vehemently pushed again towards the allegations within the swimsuit throughout his look on “Fox News Sunday.”
“This is not a purge,” he stated. “This is based on a law that was signed into effect in 2006 by then-Democrat Gov. Tim Kaine.”
The governor described how the regulation engages in an “individualized” course of that’s “not systematic” the place non-citizens, as self-identified throughout visits to the state’s Division of Motor Autos, who someway handle to make it onto the voter rolls are given “14 days to affirm they are a citizen and if they don’t, they come off the voter rolls.”
Youngkin pressured that people affected by the regulation nonetheless have the choice of same-day voter registration and casting a provisional poll.
“To describe this as something that’s a purge is completely inaccurate. It’s wholly consistent with the U.S. Constitution, the Virginia Constitution and Virginia law,” he insisted.
After recalling how the DOJ underneath the Bush administration discovered that the regulation didn’t violate the Structure, Youngkin recommended that political issues motivated the DOJ’s latest swimsuit, noting that the criticism was filed 25 days earlier than the presidential election.
Youngkin added: “It’s been in effect for 18 years. It’s been applied universally by Republican and Democratic governors and now all of a sudden, when Virginia’s getting tight, it launches a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Virginia when we are trying to make sure that citizens vote, not non-citizens.”
Youngkin rejected the notion that the only motivation for the DOJ’s swimsuit was the enforcement of the regulation inside 90 days of the election: “It had been used within the 90-day quiet period, most recently by Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, and they said nothing.”
“How can we, as a nation, and how can I, as a governor, allow non-citizens to be on the voter roll?” he requested. “This is just not right. It’s not just constitutionally correct, it’s common sense.”
“Elections in the United States should be decided by citizens, Younkin added, “non-citizens just shouldn’t be on the voter rolls.”
Vowing that “we’re going to make sure that elections in Virginia are fair and accurate and safe,” Youngkin outlined a few of the efforts his state has taken to make sure this objective: “We have paper ballots. We have counting machines, not voting machines.”
With two weeks to go till Election Day, the RealClearPolitics common of polls taken in Virginia since Sept. 3 present Vice President Kamala Harris beating former President Donald Trump by 6.4 proportion factors. Whereas this may represent an enchancment for the Republican nominee who misplaced to President Joe Biden by 10.1 proportion factors within the 2020 election, the polling nonetheless means that the Democratic nominee is favored.
The DOJ’s litigation over eradicating non-citizens from voter rolls additionally extends to a state unlikely to be aggressive within the presidential election: Alabama.
The Biden administration filed a lawsuit towards the state within the U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of Alabama final month, taking difficulty with Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen’s Aug. 13 announcement that his workplace had carried out a course of to take away people with “noncitizen identification numbers” from Alabama’s voter rolls.
Allen’s announcement got here inside 90 days of the 2024 election. Final week, a federal decide sided with the Biden administration by issuing an order requiring the cessation of this system. Alabama supported Trump by 25.4 proportion factors in 2020 and is predicted to favor the Republican nominee by an analogous margin this yr.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Put up. He could be reached at: [email protected]
“Well bless their hearts.”
