Judge blocks Virginia’s noncitizen voter purge, orders 1,500 names restored to election rolls

Virginia moved to appeal after a federal judge ordered the state to restore 1,500 names to its voting rolls, saying officials were too hasty in declaring them noncitizens.

The judge said Virginia violated a federal law that bans systematic removal of voters’ names within 90 days of a federal election.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, though, said the individuals self-identified as noncitizens, so the state had an obligation — and indeed a legal duty under Virginia law — to remove them. 

“Let’s be clear about what just happened: Only 11 days before a presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals — who self-identified themselves as noncitizens — back onto the voter rolls. Almost all these individuals had previously presented immigration documents confirming their noncitizen status, a fact recently verified by federal authorities,” the Republican governor said.

Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia delivered her ruling Friday from the bench, granting an injunction that ordered the names restored. 

Judge Giles ruled that names can only be removed from now to the election if they are cases of criminal conviction, mental incapacity, death, or request of a particular voter.

She denied Virginia’s request to stay the ruling while the state appeals.

Within hours, the state filed its notice of appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

The Republican National Committee labeled Judge Giles’ ruling “the worst of judicial activism.” Former President Donald Trump, at a campaign stop in Austin, Texas, said the decision sows doubts about the election.

“The outrageous decision goes against the very bedrock of our democracy, and thankfully, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is doing a terrific job, is trying to fix this problem,” Mr. Trump said. “This is blatantly un-American and it is election interference.”

The ruling is the latest in a series of battles playing out in states over attempts to clean rolls of noncitizens.

Alabama was ordered to restore several thousand names to its rolls this month after a similar purge.

In both cases, the Biden Justice Department and left-leaning voting groups demanded the courts step in.

Mr. Youngkin in August ordered election officials to conduct daily checks of their voter rolls looking for ineligible voters, including those who aren’t citizens.

A federal law prohibits systematic cleansing of voter rolls in the 90 days before a federal election, or what’s known as the quiet period. The law does allow individualized deletions, however.

The Justice Department said names removed in response to Mr. Youngkin’s order violated the quiet period — and indeed were sometimes wrong.

In court documents, the Justice Department said local election officials were ousting legitimate voters. As of Oct. 16, for example, Loudoun County had removed 102 voters during the quiet period, but three voters later submitted affirmations of their citizenship and eight re-registered, the feds said.

The key question before the court is whether Mr. Youngkin’s order qualified as a systematic removal.

The judge’s order doesn’t affect 6,303 names Mr. Youngkin said the state had already culled from January 2022 to July 2024, or before the current federal election quiet period.

Virginia says it used the voters’ own records — usually a driver’s license application, where someone is required to state citizenship status — to flag ineligible voters.

Election officials then attempted two follow-up contacts before erasing the name, the state’s lawyers said in court briefs. Those efforts, the state said, show that the purge was not systematic and doesn’t violate the quiet period.

But a lawyer for the voting groups challenging the state said she had encountered a Henrico County voter, a “lifelong citizen” and Republican voter, who was removed by the purge and who said she never got any notifications.

She went to cast an in-person early vote this month and was told she was removed because the U.S. citizen box wasn’t checked on her most recent driver’s license application. She was turned away and had to re-register.

Virginia, in its court filings, also argued that the federal quiet period law applies only to actual voters, not to those automatically ineligible, such as noncitizens and those too young to vote.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares blasted both the Justice Department’s intervention and the court’s ruling.

“It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter. Yet, today a court — urged by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice — ordered Virginia to put the names of noncitizens back on the voter rolls, mere days before a presidential election,” he said in a social media post.