After Democrats and the corporate media have insisted for months that Republican warnings about noncitizens voting were nothing more than “conspiracy theories,” the Biden Department of Justice is now suing Virginia for enforcing a 2006 law and removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls.
The controversy began in August when Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order clarifying certain election security procedures – including one in a 2006 law signed by then-Democrat Governor Tim Kaine which helps election officials remove noncitizens from voter rolls.
Under the provisions of that legislation, when a Virginia resident identifies as a noncitizen on a Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles form, the DMV cross-references his or her name with voter rolls. If that self-identified noncitizen is registered to vote, he or she has 14 days to provide proof of citizenship or else face removal from voter rolls.
As The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board has pointed out, “Even if an eligible voter fails to respond to the notice and then gets removed in this way, he could always re-register, since Virginia lets its residents sign up to vote on Election Day.”
Thanks to Youngkin’s August executive order beefing up enforcement of that law, more than 6,300 noncitizens – ineligible voters – were removed from Virginia’s voter rolls. As Democrats have so often repeated in recent months, it is against federal law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Youngkin’s proactive approach helped ensure the law was enforced.
But instead of bipartisan applause over this common-sense reform, Democrats at the state and federal level have lobbed accusations of “voter suppression” at Youngkin, culminating in the DOJ’s lawsuit. In other words, Democrats are outraged that Republicans are preventing noncitizens from being registered to vote and casting ballots – exactly what liberals have insisted “isn’t happening.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland claims in that suit that Virginia has violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which mandates that all “systematic” changes to voting rolls be completed at least 90 days before the election. This so-called “quiet period” is intended to protect eligible voters from being “disenfranchised on short notice.”
Yet as the Journal again notes, Virginia’s effort is hardly “systematic” but is instead “individualized” and “based on self-reporting.” As Youngkin has repeatedly pointed out, the law has been in place for 18 years. Only now, when it is actually enforced in any meaningful way, has the Department of Justice taken issue with it.
Moreover, as Fox News recently reported, “The Justice Department once greenlit the very election reform law it is now suing Virginia over.” Following the law’s initial passage in 2006, an official in the agency’s Civil Rights Division wrote that the Attorney General’s office “does not interpose any objections to the specific changes” made by the law to procedures for maintaining voter rolls.
“To be clear, this is not a purge,” Youngkin said about the suit over the weekend. “25 days — last week — before the election, the Justice Department decides they are going to bring suit after this law’s been in effect for 18 years, administered by Democrat and Republican governors. And this is the reason why I believe that Americans and Virginians wonder what the Justice Department is up to.”
Virginia isn’t the only state that has removed large numbers of noncitizens from its voter rolls – indicating that the problem is far more serious than Democrats are letting on. In August, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state had removed more than one million noncitizens from its voter rolls since 2021. In Alabama, a federal judge has halted another effort to remove more than 3,000 noncitizens from that state’s voter rolls, citing the same 1993 law the DOJ is now using to target Virginia.
The growing cascade of revelations about just how widespread the issue of noncitizens illegally voting is has fatally undermined liberal claims that the problem is not serious enough to influence the outcome of elections.
Elected Democrats and the corporate media have leaned heavily on the relatively low number of noncitizens actually prosecuted for illegally voting to justify their claims, ignoring the mounting evidence that untold numbers of noncitizens may be casting ballots completely undetected. Some experts believe up to 2.7 million noncitizens could vote in this November’s election.
As AMAC Newsline has previously reported, noncitizens have numerous avenues to illegally gain access to voting booths. 14 states don’t require a photo ID to cast a ballot, while 28 states, including Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina, allow voters to use a student ID to vote, which does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. At least 19 other states and Washington, D.C., have also passed bills allowing non-citizens to obtain driver’s licenses.
The DOJ’s lawsuit against Virginia has once again thrust the issue of noncitizens voting back into the mainstream. For Democrats, it has become increasingly difficult to spin the issue as one of “voter suppression” rather than what is really at stake – mass numbers of noncitizens violating the sanctity of American democracy.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
