Justice orders Virginia to restore voters removed from rolls on suspicion of being non-citizens

Judge Patricia Giles barred the state of Virginia from purging voter rolls containing hundreds of suspected non-citizens. Giles ordered the state to reinstate more than 1,600 people who had already been removed from those lists.

The judge found that the purge of the voter rolls, ordered on August 7, took place too close to the presidential election. Federal law prohibits states from systematically removing people from the voter rolls within 90 days after an election.

Gile's decision comes weeks after the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the state for purging its voter rolls ahead of the November presidential election. The state's governor, Glenn Youngkin, claimed they simply removed non-citizens from the rolls.

In early August, the governor of Virginia signed an executive order to update the voter list daily to search for irregularities, in this case non-citizens.

The search consisted of comparing "the list of persons who have been identified as non-citizens" by the state Department of Motor Vehicles "with the list of existing registered voters." Local registrars then contacted voters in question, notifying them that their registration wouild be canceled unless they provided proof of citizenship within 14 days.

"With less than 30 days until the election, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice is filing an unprecedented lawsuit against me and the Commonwealth of Virginia, for appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine that requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls - a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a non-citizen and then registering to vote. Virginians - and Americans - will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy," the governor wrote in the statement.