Meet several Virginians who nearly lost their right to vote after being declared “non-citizens.”

Dennis Henson has been a registered voter his entire adult life.

Therefore, he did not expect a letter dated Aug. 28 stating that his voter registration was expiring because he had been identified as a noncitizen.

Henson, of Lynchburg, believes he accidentally forgot to mark his citizenship status on a Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles form when he renewed his driver’s license in July.

“Obviously I missed a box,” Henson told a Cardinal News reporter Friday as he sat on the steps of his Hill City home, taking a break from painting and other home improvement projects.

If you do not check the citizenship box or do not identify yourself as a non-citizen, the DMV will notify the Department of Elections, which will then notify the local registrar’s office, which will then send the resident a warning letter to inform him that his registration will be cancelled. The citizen is given 14 days to respond.

Henson wanted to vote on Election Day. He has a special red shirt that he wears to the polls to show his support for the Republican Party: “I’m a 100% Republican, Donald Trump.”

So, he sent a response within the required 14 days. He suspects the postal service did not deliver the letter to the Lynchburg Registrar’s Office on time because he received another notice, dated Sept. 19, saying his voter registration had been canceled.

On Oct. 14, Henson went to the registrar’s office on Kemper Street in person and filled out paperwork to re-register to vote.

“Everything has been settled,” he said.

Since Aug. 7, a dozen voters have been removed from Lynchburg’s voter rolls after they, like Henson, were identified by the DMV as noncitizens.

Lawrence Otey, a longtime voter who lives in Roanoke, accidentally checked the “non-US citizen” box when renewing his driver’s license. He was then notified of his delisting.

Oti’s brick home is located on a steep hill in a friendly neighborhood, the kind of place where you can answer the door when a stranger comes knocking. He walked outside wearing a Virginia Tech track jacket and noted how lucky we were with the weather, with temperatures above 70 degrees in late October, two weeks before Election Day.

“I’ve been voting since Jimmy Carter,” Auty said. He laughed at his mistake: “Don’t get old,” he said. Oty went to the DMV with various pieces of identification to look into the issue so he could vote early.

Like Henson in Lynchburg, Otey was not the only one to learn that he had been declared a noncitizen. In Roanoke, 32 voters were removed from the rolls, and in Roanoke County, 15 were removed. Four were removed in Danville and one was removed in Bristol.

Those whose registrations were recently canceled after being bureaucratically declared “non-citizens” have received a reprieve thanks to a recent court ruling.

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Virginia Department of Elections to reinstate approximately 1,600 voters who were removed from the rolls after they were “declared noncitizens” under Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Aug. 7 executive order.

The ruling, handed down by Judge Patricia Giles in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, said Youngkin and the Department of Elections must stop systematically removing voters from the rolls. The Department of Elections must also reinstate those suspended after the order was issued within five days of the decision. A written notice must also be given to each voter disqualified since August 7 that their registration will be reinstated.

Under the regulation, the Department of Elections is permitted to continue to remove voters from the rolls at the request of a registrant due to a criminal conviction or mental incapacity, or due to the death of a registrant.

Lawsuit against Yankin’s decree

Voter rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice filed lawsuits Oct. 11 against the Commonwealth and the Department of Elections, seeking to halt the Jankin order.

It sparked a political firestorm during an already tense election cycle, with claims of “meddling” leveled against the Justice Department by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and others in the GOP.

DMV data was used to routinely remove people who identified as noncitizens from voter rolls prior to Youngkin’s order. Seven people were removed from the Lynchburg rolls after they were declared noncitizens in 2024, before the president’s August order.

The lawsuit alleged that Youngkin’s order violated a provision of the National Voter Registration Act that requires states to conduct systematic programs to remove the names of ineligible voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That section of the law, known as the Quiet Period Clause, applies to programs that seek to remove people from voter registration rolls based on their perceived failure to meet initial eligibility requirements, such as citizenship, at the time of registration, according to the statement. Ministry of Justice.

Jankin’s order, issued exactly 90 days before the Nov. 5 election, required the Department of Elections to verify the legal presence and identity of voters daily using DMV data.

Voting rights groups argue that the use of DMV data could lead to U.S. citizens being wrongly removed from voter rolls. And in court filings, they described at least three separate instances where this happened after the president’s order.

In a statement Friday, Youngkin said the people removed from the lists “identified themselves as non-citizens.”

Reaction to the resolution

On Friday afternoon, Virginia Election Commissioner Susan Beals, Attorney General Jason Miyares and other state officials filed an appeal of Giles’ decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond.

Miyares called the lawsuit an “intimidation” and “weaponization” of the Justice Department against the Commonwealth in a statement before the appeal.

“Of great concern is the Biden-Harris administration’s open practice of using the legal system as a weapon against the enemies of so-called progress. This is the definition of the law,” he said.

Youngkin argued that his order was consistent with a state law signed nearly two decades ago.

“This is a Virginia law passed in 2006 and signed by then-Governor Tim Kaine that mandates certain procedures for removing non-citizens from the voter rolls, with safeguards to verify citizenship before removal – and the ultimate guarantee of fail-safe same-day registration for US citizens to vote preliminary,” Youngkin said in a statement. “This law has been used in every presidential election by Republicans and Democrats since its passage 18 years ago.”

Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, a Democrat, agreed with Friday’s ruling that Youngkin’s order violated established law.

“This purge was a direct attempt to deny voting rights to eligible U.S. citizens, and I thank the courts for intervening,” he said in a statement. “Voting is sacred, and our ancestors shed their blood for our right to vote. It is unconscionable to see our own governor and attorney general making a concerted effort to undermine that right.”

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