Virginia judge looks ready to stop Youngkin’s voter roll purge

The case focuses on: Youngkin’s executive order dated August 7, This regulation, which envisages the deletion of daily voter lists based on data from the Department of Motor Vehicles, is considered an individualized process rather than a broad and systematic process. This distinction is crucial because the National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” before elections, during which systematic purges of voter rolls are not permitted. according to lawyers For the Department of Justice and individual plaintiffs.

Youngkin’s order has resulted in the removal of more than 1,600 voters so far, and plaintiffs say even a single mistake in removing a voter from the state rolls is enough to deem the process systematic. By contrast, Virginia argues that if even a noncitizen could vote in an election, the harm from “cancelling” another legal vote would be just as serious.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles, an appointee of President Joe Biden, told all parties involved in the case that she is focused on adjudicating the Justice Department’s claim that the state violated the 90-day rule under the NVRA.

“I don’t want to create a problem that I don’t need to create,” said Giles, who has fewer questions for the Justice Department and has at times been more skeptical of allegations from state defendants.

Based on its interpretation, Virginia argued that it could perform daily voter roll updates even during the 90-day quiet period before the election. 2006 state law and Youngkin’s executive order. Those updates, which use data from the DMV to identify non-citizens, were needed only to keep eligible voters on the rolls and that the plaintiffs and the Justice Department waited too long to file suit, state attorneys said.

“We are only 10 days away from the 2024 presidential election,” state attorney Charles Cooper told Giles, emphasizing that preventing the state from maintaining daily tally updates could have a tangible impact on election integrity.

“I don’t say this lightly,” Giles said.

The state argues that the executive order is nothing more than a kind of routine maintenance, not a broad-scale voter purge that state lawyers argue would otherwise violate the federal rule preventing the systematic removal of voters within 90 days of a federal election.

“This starts with a basic assumption that someone walks into one of our DMVs, identifies themselves as a non-citizen, and then knowingly or accidentally ends up on the voter rolls; We are going through an individualized process, not a systematic one. Youngkin previously told Fox News what the execution was like; It’s an individualized process based on a person identifying themselves as a non-citizen, giving them 14 days to certify that they are a citizen and removing them from the voter rolls if they don’t. Order functions.

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But near the end of Thursday’s hearing, the plaintiffs’ attorneys stood up and told Giles they had a flash drive containing data revealing that at least 75 more people had been denied access to voting registration thanks to the governor’s Aug. 7 order. , argues that the evidence contradicts the defense’s claim that the state’s same-day access to voter registration records would fix potential errors.

The hearing ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, and Giles is set to make a decision Friday on Youngkin’s request to halt his efforts.