Voter purge lawsuits add to disenfranchisement allegations against Youngkin administration

Long before becoming a lawyer, state lawmaker and Virginia’s first Black House Speaker, Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, was, for years, unable to vote. After a previous felony conviction, it wasn’t until former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell restored his rights that Scott could participate in democracy again — eventually paving the way for his own run for office.

The Justice Department on Friday filed a lawsuit against Virginia, alleging that a state program aimed at removing people from the voter rolls, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin touted in an executive order in August, was implemented too close to the Nov. 5 elections and wrongfully included eligible voters. Scott said it’s another example of Youngkin’s administration restricting voting access.

“I would not be where I am today if I had to depend on somebody like Glenn Youngkin to help me get my rights restored,” Scott said in an interview Monday.

In a memo in response to the suit obtained by The Mercury over the weekend, Richard Cullen, a counselor to Youngkin, wrote that Virginia’s process for removing noncitizens from the voting rolls has taken place under both Democratic and Republican governors. It also outlines how Youngkin believes he is not violating a federal policy to have purged rolls by a set time that would allow a buffer to resolve any errors.

“Federal law does not prohibit the removal of noncitizens from the voting rolls,” the memo said, adding that the 90-day “quiet period” under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) is “not relevant to this process since Virginia conducts an individualized — not systematic — review per Virginia law in order to correct registration records.”

Youngkin on Friday called the lawsuit “unprecedented,” underscoring that his executive order simply was “appropriately enforcing a 2006 law” signed by then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, which requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.

“With the support of our attorney general, we will defend these common sense steps that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us,” Youngkin said in a statement. “Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period.”

But Scott commended the Justice Department for taking action (it also recently filed a similar suit against Alabama).

“The reason that we have this 90-day rule is that we don’t want citizens to be accidentally removed,” Scott said.

Related lawsuit stresses potential effect on naturalized citizens

The DOJ suit also isn’t the only litigation that Youngkin faces over his Executive Order 35.

A federal suit filed by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia earlier this month alleges that the process used to purge the rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act, disenfranchising eligible voters while raising concerns over transparency and accuracy in the state’s voter registration system.

The legal action by the two nonprofits came after reports surfaced that Virginians were being removed from the voter rolls due to alleged inaccuracies and outdated information. Many of these removals, the suit argues, were done without proper notification or investigation, leaving eligible voters unaware that they could no longer cast their ballots.

The lawsuit also claims that the purges disproportionately affect minority communities, low-income voters, and those who may not have easy access to the internet to check their voter status. It further asserts that the Youngkin administration has failed to adequately confirm whether a voter is ineligible, potentially silencing their voice in the democratic process.

“Naturalized citizens serve in our armed forces, pay taxes, and show their patriotism daily with their acts and contributions to our society,” Monica Sarmiento, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, said in a statement earlier this month.

“Forcing new American communities to carry undue burden that no other community is required to comply with is discrimination, and does not represent the values that our commonwealth stands for,” Sarmiento said.

Under Youngkin’s executive order, the Virginia Department of Elections is now required to send just one notice to individuals at risk of being removed from the voter rolls.

This notice is based on information from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), but there is no requirement for the accuracy of that information to be verified by either the Department of Elections or local election officials before action is taken.

State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, said Monday that the law referenced in Youngkin’s executive order relates to persons who self-identify as “non-citizens” on DMV forms that are turned over to the State Board of Elections, which then checks the information against the voter rolls and notifies those persons of pending removal from the state’s voter registration list, giving them 14 days notice of removal and the right to challenge.

“And there are failsafe measures to this,” Stanley said. “Even if they are subsequently removed from the rolls, let’s say, in error, those persons can still register to vote on Election Day under our ‘same day’ registration law. So I fail to see why the federal government is doing this but for no other reason but to try to upset our otherwise sound voter registration process here in Virginia for political purposes.”

And Rich Anderson, the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said in a phone interview Monday afternoon that Youngkin’s executive order “brought together a lot of operating practices and standards that may have been scattered over a number of other places, put it together in one document and demonstrated to the commonwealth that the governor took this seriously and was exercising his responsibilities as the chief executive.”

One of the responsibilities of the executive branch, working with the legislative branch, is to “ensure confidence in our electoral processes and systems, and that was the whole intent of this, I think,” Anderson said.

But Elections Commissioner Susan Beals, whom Youngkin appointed as Virginia’s top elections official just weeks after assuming office in early 2021, said in an interview one week before the governor issued his executive order that a process to prohibit non-citizens from voting was already in place.

“Anybody who comes to the DMV and shows documents that indicate they are a non-citizen — whether it is a visa or residency — their name is sent to the Department of Elections on a monthly basis so we can double check to make sure that they did not make their way on our voter rolls. If we find them on the rolls, we cancel them,” Beals said in the interview.

Previous election access issues

The two lawsuits are the latest in a string of voting access issues during Youngkin’s tenure.

Voting rights advocates blast Youngkin admin over error affecting 3,400

In October 2022, registrars around the state scrambled to process a backlog of over 200,000 new voter registrations amid a “computer glitch” between state agencies. In October 2023, more than 3,000 people had been mistakenly removed from voter rolls. Earlier that year, the administration also quietly adjusted its restoration of voting rights process.

Virginia’s Constitution permanently disenfranchises people with felony convictions unless a governor pardons them or restores their rights.

McDonnell, the Republican governor who restored Scott’s rights, along with democratic Govs. Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, had streamlined the process and eventually made it automatic. Now a petition-based process, Youngkin’s restoration numbers have dropped compared to his predecessors’ and little criteria has been made available to explain conditions for a restoration petition to be granted.

The Virginia chapter of the NAACP took Youngkin to court last year to get answers but a judge ruled that most details are exempt from being shared through a provision in the Freedom of Information Act.

Though Youngkin’s changes to the process aren’t going against the law, Democratic lawmakers feel it’s being used as a way to limit who can vote. The latest executive order falls amid continued allegations by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that illegal immigrants are trying to vote.

In a recent telephone rally with Trump, Youngkin touted the purge of over 6,000 people as noncitizens. But a Washington Post review of records and interviews with election officials found that most of the purge stemmed from paperwork errors, like people forgetting to check a citizenship box.

It also noted that of Virginia’s three illegal voting prosecutions to occur since 2022, none involved a question of citizenship.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and X.