Federal judge grants the Biden-Harris DOJ’s wishes regarding noncitizen voters in Virginia
The Biden-Harris Department of Justice
sued the Commonwealth of Virginia earlier this month in an attempt to arrest and reverse its efforts to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.
A Biden-nominated judge obliged the DOJ Friday,
ruling that Virginia must restore the registrations of over 1,600 individuals allegedly identified as noncitizens.
According to Bloomberg News, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles claimed the removals were a “clear violation” of the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period provision, which requires states to complete programs intended to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from registration lists by no later than 90 days prior to a primary election or general election for federal office.
The Biden judge ordered the state to dispatch notices to everyone whose registration was canceled under Youngkin’s individualized voter roll cleanup program.
Giles indicated that these notices must go out even to those who election officials have reason to believe are noncitizens, telling the state’s lawyer, “I’m not dealing with beliefs. I’m dealing with evidence.”
Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the state, told the court, “Congress couldn’t possibly have intended to prevent the removal … of persons who were never eligible to vote in the first place,”
reported the Associated Press.
‘It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter.’
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin
indicated that Virginia will appeal the ruling and, if necessary, take the the matter all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the injunction.
“Let’s be clear about what just happened: only eleven days before a Presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals — who self-identified themselves as noncitizens — back onto the voter rolls,” Youngkin said in a statement.
The governor noted further that the state was simply following through on a law “passed in 2006, signed by then-Governor Tim Kaine, that mandates certain procedures to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, with safeguards in place to affirm citizenship before removal — and the ultimate failsafe of same-day registration for U.S. citizens to cast a provisional ballot. This law has been applied in every presidential election by Republicans and Democrats since enacted 18 years ago.”
Blaze News
previously reported that Youngkin issued an executive order on Aug. 7, exactly 90 days before the general election, requiring both that the commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections routinely update voter lists to remove individuals identified as noncitizens and that the state Department of Motor Vehicles expedite the interagency data-sharing with the DOE with regard to noncitizen transactions.
“Call me crazy, but I think American elections should be decided by American citizens and Virginia elections should be decided by Virginians,” Youngkin
said in an interview.
The DOJ swooped in with a lawsuit on Oct. 11,
claiming the initiative violated Section 8(c)(2) of the NVRA.
Former Virginia Attorney General Richard Cullen, Youngkin’s lawyer, contended that the program was kosher because it is not a systematic program but rather an individualized process that begins with “individuals themselves indicating that they are a noncitizen during a DMV transaction.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares
said of Giles’ ruling, “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 suggested that this is a clear case of the Biden-Harris administration weaponizing the legal system “against the enemies of so-called progress.”
“That is the definition of lawfare,” continued the state attorney general. “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.”
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