Biden-Appointed Judge Orders Noncitizens Back on Voter Rolls in Virginia

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There’s plenty of debate over whether Virginia is truly in play for 2024, but one thing is certain: multiple polls have shown the race neck-and-neck within the margin of error. The possibility that Donald Trump could flip Virginia may well have been a factor in Joe Biden’s exit from the race. Sure, there have been polls showing Kamala Harris with a formidable lead there as well, but in the end, we won’t know until after Election Day.

One promising sign that Virginia was looking good for Trump was Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order ordering that all votes for the 2024 presidential election be cast by paper ballot, and when he had the voter rolls in his state reviewed and thousands of non-citizens removed from the voter rolls.

I guess Virginia is in play because a federal judge just ordered that all noncitizens the state purged from the voter rolls be reinstated following a lawsuit that the Biden-Harris administration brought.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Virginia to restore more than 1,600 voter registrations that she said were illegally purged in the last two months in an effort to stop noncitizens from voting.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the Justice Department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.

The Justice Departmen t and private groups, including the League of Women Voters, said many of the 1,600 voters whose registrations were canceled were in fact citizens whose registrations were canceled because of bureaucratic errors or simple mistakes like a mischecked box on a form.

Justice Department lawyer Sejal Jhaveri said during an all-day injunction hearing Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, that’s precisely why federal law prevents states from implementing systematic changes to the voter rolls in the 90 days before an election, “to prevent the harm of having eligible voters removed in a period where it’s hard to remedy.”

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles is a Biden appointee.

Youngkin blasted the injunction and noted that the voters the state removed from the voter rolls had all identified themselves as noncitizens.

“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. “Almost all these individuals had previously presented immigration documents confirming their noncitizen status, a fact recently verified by federal authorities.”

“This is a Virginia 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,” Youngkin continued. “This law has been applied in every Presidential election by Republicans and Democrats since enacted 18 years ago.”

Youngkin added that “Virginia will immediately petition the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court, for an emergency stay of the injunction.”

Biden nominated Giles to the federal bench in June 2021, and the Senate confirmed her in October of that year.