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Who’s Behind Biden-Harris DOJ’s Move to Put 6,000 Noncitizens Back on the Voter Rolls?

Posted on Friday, October 18, 2024
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In 2006, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine signed a bipartisan bill requiring the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to provide a list of noncitizens’ names to the state’s Board of Elections for removal from the voter rolls. 

Now, less than a month before Election Day, the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department is suing in hopes of restoring 6,303 noncitizens to Virginia’s voter rolls who were removed in August. 

Subsequent Virginia governors since Kaine, both Republican and Democrat, have overseen the removal of noncitizen voters from the rolls. 

In August, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, signed an executive order to do so, in part relying on the 2006 law drafted by then-state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli. 

“It passed without much controversy, about 2-1 in the Legislature, and then Tim [Kaine] signed it when he presented himself as a centrist,” Cuccinelli, a Republican who was elected as Virginia’s attorney general in 2009, told The Daily Signal

“This is pure political timing,” Cuccinelli said of the Biden-Harris administration’s legal action. “These are literally people who self-identified as noncitizens.”

“If the purpose was to generate news, that’s what the DOJ has done,” he said. “They want noncitizens, both legal and illegal, to vote.”

Kaine, who signed the 2006 bill into law, went on to become a U.S. senator representing Virginia as well as Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate in 2016. 

The Daily Signal sought comment from Kaine’s Senate office as well as his reelection campaign. 

Kaine’s campaign referred to a July interview with WJLA-TV (Channel 7), in which a reporter asked: “Should non-U.S. citizens vote in American elections?”

Kaine replied: “No. Voting should be reserved for U.S. citizens.”

The campaign also noted that a Kaine campaign spokesperson told WJLA on Wednesday:

Sen. Kaine believes that noncitizens should not vote in state or federal elections, and that’s why he signed legislation as governor to guard against it. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote and the good news is that there is no evidence that noncitizens have voted or are voting in Virginia. 

And just as we want to block noncitizens from voting, we need to keep eligible voters from being purged from voting rolls, particularly just weeks from an election. Sen. Kaine is focused on making sure that every eligible Virginian has the opportunity to vote in this critical election.

The matter likely won’t be resolved in court by Election Day, Cuccinelli said, now the national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative. However, he said, the Justice Department’s lawsuit seems to be intended as a warning for other states not to clean up voter rolls. 

The lawsuit alleges that Virginia’s removal of noncitizens from voter rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “motor voter law,” because the removal comes fewer than 90 days before an election. 

DOJ’s action follows a federal lawsuit filed by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia in which those organizations make the same arguments. 

“These liberal groups sued Virginia and then a few weeks later the Justice Department files the same lawsuit,” Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Republican Committee, told The Daily Signal. 

“This shows they are nervous about Virginia,” Gorka said of leading Democrats. “It used to be a solidly blue state and now has moved to the middle and is a toss-up.”

“They are going for the optics and this is going to backfire. Americans overwhelmingly believe that only Americans should vote,”  she said. 

The plaintiffs in the private lawsuit in Virginia are represented by Campaign Legal Center, Protect Democracy, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Advancement Project.

Three organizations involved in the litigation—the League of Women Voters, the Advancement Project, and Campaign Legal Center—participated in a White House conference in 2021. That meeting was about implementing President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which directed federal agencies, including the Justice Department, to partner with private interest groups to boost voter registration and turnout. 

As The Daily Signal previously reported, the Justice Department last month brought a similar lawsuit against Alabama for removing noncitizens from that state’s voter registration rolls. 

A similar lawsuit was brought against Alabama by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization known for labeling mainstream center-right organizations as “hate groups” similar to neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC also was  represented at the White House conference on Biden’s election executive order.

The Justice Department has invoked “presidential privilege” to prevent release of its strategic plan for implementing Biden’s order of March 7, 2021. 

Still, Cuccinelli said, he thinks “for sure” the Virginia litigation is tied to the president’s order. 

“They are hiding communications all over the place,” the former Virginia attorney general said.  “There is no way to treat these as privileged. It is pure collusion and weaponization of government through these outside groups.”

The Daily Signal sought comment from both of the private litigants in the Virginia case: the League of Women Voters and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Neither responded. 

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit Oct. 11 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

“As the National Voter Registration Act mandates, officials across the country should take heed of the law’s crystal clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“By canceling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate,” Clarke said in the public statement. “Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh-hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters.”

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal.

Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Fred Lucas

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.

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Linda Johnson
Linda Johnson
1 month ago

Non-citizens are just that NON CITIZEN!!! What is so hard about it that demented dems can’t understand? And why can’t Voter Polls be KEPT clean every year? I would volunteer some of my time. States should be fined if Voter Polls are not kept cleaned!!!!!

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 month ago

The Communist democrats will do anything to cheat, lie, and rig elections to stay in power and control. This is election interference and unlawful.

Walter
Walter
1 month ago

I bet you won’t find 10% of the American people would agree with the rogue department of justice and the other groups trying to throw an election.
Congress best make some changes to the “Votor/Motor” laws put on the books during the Clinton administration. They knew full well, “motor/voter” meant possible chaos down the road. And it has shown just that.
Make the changes ON the license itself. “NON-CITIZEN” . . . and if they enter the USA legally, go through the legal channels of naturalization, have the license changed.
Just think about it, Giving an illegal immigrant a license, and then allowing that license to be used as voter I.D.
NOPE. Change that law, like ‘ol Clinton used to say when he got caught breaking a law, “That law is a bad law and it needs to be changed” . . . never-mind he BROKE the existing law.

Hope McCloud
Hope McCloud
1 month ago

Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls”
If a qualified voter is removed from the rolls in error, when they attempt to vote they can object and claim they are supposed to be on the roll. They will be given what is called a “provisional “ballot and can vote. Any/all provisional ballots will be verified (and counted if legitimate) IF and only if the total number of provisional ballots could make a difference in the outcome of an election.
So nobody is disenfranchised.

uncleferd
uncleferd
1 month ago

There is no excuse for voting by non- eligible parties… anywhere. Disenfranchizing citizens’ rights to representation is against our laws and our values.

Joe Black
Joe Black
1 month ago

Doesn’t it may everyone ask why do we want people from other countries voting in our elections? That in itself is more concerning to me. I fully understand why they want the illegal immigration to continue, as it’s not clearly defined, thought it shouldn’t need to be, that non-citizens are counted in the census, which affects the numbers of Congressional Representatives a state has. The census used to discern between citizens and noncitizens, as it should. When we turn our election over to foreign interest, and we know what they are doing, we’ll have much worse problems than we can imagine. The enemy is subtle! What he says he’s doing is a smoke screen for what he wants, and that is complete control. That’s Biblical!

Rich
Rich
1 month ago

Who is the wizard behind the curtain? I believe we will soon find out. After this whole election circus get figured out, (probably by the Supreme court) the Marxist/democrats will be history in their present form. They will have to rebuild and rebrand their failed party. Not even the illegals will support them. Watch what God will do.

spitfire?
spitfire?
1 month ago

United States Constitution.Amendment XV,XXIV.ONLY United States Citizens can vote in any election.The communistTim Kane does not have the power to alter that and can be impeached if he attempts to do so.

Larry W
Larry W
1 month ago

Trickery is the only way some can win. No doubt, like in 2020, AFTER the final deadline, democrats will find more “uncounted” ballots that just arrived at the polling place and will see that only democrats and RIINOs count the ballots

Jan
Jan
1 month ago

I would like to see the enforcement of non-citizens voting to impact the non-citizens. Threaten that they will be charged for violating our laws while we hash out and clean up our voting rolls. Vote Trump – he will get moving on a solution.

Richard Schwenderman
Richard Schwenderman
1 month ago

The NVRA needs at a minimum Section 8 be reformed to ‘mandate’ eligibility to vote with documentation that allows said individual to vote as a requirement for automatic simultaneously being registered at any permitted offices.

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 month ago

Get a Real Hob Sarah S.

Keith
Keith
1 month ago

The dumbos will do anything to cheat

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President Joe Biden, son Hunter Biden and sister Valerie Biden walk across the South Lawn of The White House on July 28, 2024 in Washington, DC. President Biden is returning from a weekend trip to Camp David. (Photo by Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Dana White during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City.

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