The Biden-Harris Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Friday alleging that Virginia’s removal of noncitizens and other ineligible registrants from its voter rolls is illegal.
“The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and the Justice Department will continue to ensure that the rights of qualified voters are protected,” Kristen Clarke, the hyper-partisan head of the agency’s Civil Rights Division, contended in a melodramatic statement.
The suit comes in response to efforts by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) to ensure only eligible U.S. citizens are on the state’s voter registration lists.
In an August executive order directing commonwealth agencies to undertake election security efforts ahead of the November election, Youngkin revealed that ELECT had removed 6,303 noncitizens from Virginia’s voter rolls from January 2022 to July 2024. The directive also included instructions for ensuring accuracy within the state voter rolls.
In its lawsuit, the DOJ — which has regularly been weaponized to target Republican-led election integrity efforts since Joe Biden became president — alleged that the state’s removal of foreign nationals from its voter registration lists violated the “Quiet Period Provision” of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. That law requires states to complete “not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
The Justice Department claimed that the processes
