DOJ Picks a PR Fight Over Voter-Roll Errors
The DOJ's effort to stop VA from following federal and state law to remove noncitizens from voter rolls becomes a PR battle. EPEC Team reminds readers of noncitizens with voting history.
Do noncitizens on Virginia’s voter rolls get a three-month pass to stay on the rolls through Nov. 5th? What kind of message does that send to illegal registrations?
The arguments are in the air after the the Biden administration’s Department of Justice decided to pick a fight with the Commonwealth of Virginia by filing a lawsuit to stop it from removing noncitizens who are illegally registered.
Weeks into Virginia’s 45-day early voting in the 2024 General Election, the lawsuit claims Virginia is in violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). It argues that individuals who are ineligible to be registered should be tucked into the NVRA’s 90-day “quiet period” that prohibits systemic removals from voter rolls.
The timing of the lawsuit has legal experts calling foul play over politics.
The “plain text of the [NVRA] does not require states to keep an individual registered who was never eligible to be registered in the first place,” writes election-law expert Hans Von Spakovsky in a legal brief for the Heritage Foundation.
Any interpretation of the NVRA to keep noncitizens on the voter rolls — when federal and state laws prohibit it, “would render the NVRA unconstitutional,” he writes.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin was trending yet again after he appeared on Fox News Sunday to argue the 90-day “quiet period” rule does not apply:
It’s been 18 years since then-governor Tim Kaine signed this legislation into law, and now we’ve learned it was with the express approval of the DOJ civil rights division. Ensuring Virginia’s voter rolls do not include noncitizens is not a partisan issue — it’s constitutional, it’s the law in Virginia, and it’s just commonsense.
Andy McCarthy, a former DOJ prosecutor, also took issue with the DOJ’s actions, writing in National Review:
Virginia law requires election officials to challenge any voter they suspect of being an illegal alien. Those challenged may still cast ballots, but they must sign a statement under oath attesting that they are U.S. citizens — a requirement completely consistent with federal law.
Virginia has a “compelling interest in following its law. When noncitizens vote, the votes of citizens in the state are canceled out and collectively diluted, a denial of their civil rights.
In a tight race, as the 2024 election is expected to be, a few thousand votes by unqualified voters — which is to say, a minuscule percentage of the millions of aliens whose illegal entry Biden and Harris have willfully abetted — could determine the outcome, illegally depriving American citizen voters of the right to elect the candidate of their choice.”
Yes, Virginia, Noncitizens are Voting
In its complaint, the DOJ claims “there is no evidence of widespread voting” by noncitizens in elections.
Voting records of Virginia show that noncitizens have a history of casting ballots before they “self-declare” as noncitizens and are removed.
One might argue that a few thousand citizens whose voices are canceled by noncitizens voting illegally would be of concern to the DOJ’s Civil Rights division.
EPEC has documented this for months.
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director, Jon Lareau, has documented hundreds of noncitizens — who have attested in writing they are noncitizens — that have cast close to 1,300 ballots at least since 2019.
As Lareau wrote last week, “using the data provided by ELECT, we have identified at least 3,533 unique registrations that were identified as ‘Declared Non-Citizen’ and removed by ELECT from the voter rolls since May of 2023.”
These numbers do not include individuals who were reinstated for any potential error.
“In all, the data show there were 1,296 associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019. There were an additional 2 non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data, that were not contained in the Voter History data.
“The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 1,298 by 539 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.”
Voting illegally is a Class 6 felony in Virginia.
In August, Gov. Youngkin announced that ELECT had removed over 6,300 noncitizens from its rolls over a two-year period starting in 2021.
The removals followed an individualized system of cross-referencing legal presence codes from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles as well as federal databases on naturalization status. Individuals are contacted by mail (and email if possible), asking them to attest under penalty of perjury or deportation they are citizens.
If they fail to respond, they are removed within 14 days. If they are removed in error, they can re-register.
In response to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order that reminded election officials of their duty to refer potential felony voting violations to law enforcement, Virginia localities have been taking action.
Fairfax County voted to send over 900 individuals removed from the voter rolls to the Attorney General and the Commonwealth Attorney.
Arlington County has also made referrals of noncitizens removed from its rolls.
Other localities are investigating noncitizens who leave a voting history before they are removed from the rolls as “declared noncitizens.”
Within a few weeks, left-wing progressive groups launched a lawsuit against the Youngkin administration. Days later, the DOJ filed a nearly identical lawsuit.
The case law is not on the DOJ’s side, as Von Spakovsky notes:
In 2012, in Arcia v. Detzner, a federal case out of the Southern District of Florida, Judge William Zloch said [a similar claim as the DOJ’s] would “produce an absurd result.”
A state, in effect, would be blocked from removing “from its voting rolls minors, fictitious individuals, individuals who misrepresent their residence in the state, and non-citizens.”
The 90-day deadline, the judge decided, “simply does not apply to an improperly registered noncitizen.”
Even the PR battle that ideological allies have launched appears to be sputtering.
In Cardinal News, for example, State Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D-15), who is expected to run for statewide office in 2025, launched a tale of a citizen who ran into a birth certificate glitch through the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, which impacted his registration.
The individual was able to re-register and vote. She labeled this a “purge.”
The Virginia Mercury, a nonprofit news operation funded by leftwing activists, ran an op-ed with Halloween-style scare tactics, asking readers: do you know whether you’re still an eligible voter?
Citizens can check their registration status on the Department of Elections’ portal.
ELECT’s 2024 report on its voter-list maintenance programs can be viewed here.
A hearing is scheduled on the injunction request in federal court Thursday. The judge appears to be an appointee of the Biden administration.
Constitutional professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley has weighed in as well on the case, which involves a statute originally blessed by the DOJ before it was signed by a Democrat Governor, who is now running for re-election as a Democrat incumbent senator against Republican challenger Hung Cao:
"The mark of Kaine on this law is an indelible reminder of how even long-standing practices are now being challenged. Voters need to be careful when picking their line at their polling place. The longest line is likely the lawyers waiting to get inside."