A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Youngkin administration to restore the voting rights of more than 1,600 Virginia residents purged from the rolls since the governor issued an Aug. 7 executive order.
The U.S. Department of Justice had brought suit against the Glenn Youngkin-Jason Miyares voter purge, alleging that the removal process instituted under the executive order is in violation of a section of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as the Quiet Period Provision, which requires states to complete systematic programs aimed at removing the names of ineligible voters from voter registration lists no later than 90 days before federal elections.
The Quiet Period Provision applies to certain systematic programs carried out by states that are aimed at striking names from voter registration lists based on a perceived failure to meet initial eligibility requirements – including citizenship – at the time of registration.
ICYMI
Youngkin and Miyares issued misleading statements about the nature of the order from U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles, both claiming that she was ordering them to put the names of non-citizens back on the voter rolls.
“Let’s be clear about what just happened: only 11 days before a presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals – who self-identified themselves as non-citizens – back onto the voter rolls. Almost all these individuals had previously presented immigration documents confirming their non-citizen status, a fact recently verified by federal authorities,” Gov. Youngkin said, but, fact-check time, his claim here wasn’t borne out in court documents and testimony in court on Thursday.
The Justice Department case includes the story of one natural-born citizen who has voted in Virginia for more than 20 years who was told she was unregistered because she hadn’t checked the “U.S. Citizen” box on a DMV form; a second story involves a naturalized U.S. citizen who was removed because of issues with an update to her driver’s license in 2018.
“It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter. Yet, today a Court – urged by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice – ordered Virginia to put the names of non-citizens back on the voter rolls, mere days before a presidential election,” Miyares, the state attorney general, said in a statement.
“More concerning is the open practice by the Biden-Harris administration to weaponize the legal system against the enemies of so-called progress,” Miyares said. “That is the definition of lawfare. To openly choose weaponization over good process and lawfare over integrity isn’t democracy: it’s bullying, pure and simple, and I always stand up to bullies.”
The bullies here are Youngkin and Miyares, whose side, in addition to removing legal voters from the voter rolls, has recruited and certified more than 5,000 so-called poll observers and 500 volunteer attorneys to work the polls between now and the close of the machines on Election Night, with the intent of creating a paper trail that they can use to justify holding up the certification of the state’s voting in the 2024 election.
ICYMI
- Waynesboro voters seek court order requiring Nov. 5 vote certification
- Waynesboro Republicans file suit to pre-emptively challenge Nov. 5 vote count
- Waynesboro Republicans who don’t want to certify Nov. 5 election were … recruited?
- Gov. Youngkin, AG Miyares mum on Waynesboro lawsuit challenging Nov. 5 vote count
The Republican side is also testing the legal waters with a lawsuit filed in Waynesboro Circuit Court by the two Republican members of the Waynesboro Electoral Board, who say in the court filing that they will not vote to certify the Nov. 5 election results in Waynesboro absent a court order requiring them to do so.
The aim with all of this is to keep Virginia’s 13 electoral votes from going into the column of the Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has a 7.1-point lead on ex-president Donald Trump in Virginia, according to the FiveThirtyEight.com polling average.
The voter purge that was the focus of the DOJ lawsuit involves miniscule numbers – 1,600 people in a state where in the area of 4 million people are expected to cast votes in the 2024 election.
That’s a rounding number, in the grand scheme of things.
The matter, on the part of the DOJ, is more one of principle.
For Youngkin and Miyares, it’s about showing loyalty to the Big Lie that Democrats are trying to tip the scales with the votes of non-citizens.
Youngkin is a term-limited governor with little future prospects when his term is up in 15 months, so he’s got his eyes on a low-level appointment in a second Trump administration; Miyares, the current attorney general, is looking to be the Republican nominee for governor in 2025.
They’ve both vowed to appeal today’s ruling – “all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary,” Miyares said.
Share
Chris Graham
