Voters fill out their ballots at a polling place in Arlington, Virginia, on September 20. AFP via Getty Images/AFP Hide caption
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Nadra Wilson of Lynchburg, Virginia, felt anxious and confused when she received a letter in the mail from local election officials notifying her that her U.S. citizenship was being questioned.
The notice said she had 14 days to confirm she was a U.S. citizen or her voter registration would be canceled. It was first sent to the old address and then forwarded. By the time Wilson received it in October, the deadline had passed.
But Wilson was confused when he saw the letter. “I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and I’m a citizen,” Wilson said in an interview with NPR before presenting her American passport as evidence.
Wilson, who works in the medical field, moved to Virginia nine years ago and first registered to vote before the 2016 election.
The U.S. Supreme Court could rule as early as Tuesday afternoon on an emergency request to block a lower court ruling that ordered Wilson and about 1,600 other registered voters reinstated in Virginia. A lower court found that the voter removal program removed voters from state registration lists in violation of federal law. The state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, said the program enforces a 2006 state law and excludes noncitizens who are ineligible to vote. In August, he issued an executive order requiring county election officials to remove every day the state reports suspected noncitizens.
But as the stories of Mr. Wilson and other voters demonstrate, the program falsely traps Americans who are eligible to vote.
Urgent appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court
Civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia over the program earlier this month.
Virginia moved to high court after U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled Friday that the state’s plan violates federal law by systematically removing voters too close to federal elections. We are asking for consideration.
Under the National Voter Registration Act, states must suspend certain types of voter list maintenance programs that systematically remove voters for 90 days immediately before an election to prevent mistakes from occurring too close to the election. The so-called quiet period began this year on August 7, the same day Yonkin issued his executive order.
Giles, who was nominated by President Biden, ordered Virginia to reinstate 1,600 disenfranchised voters by Wednesday. Her order also said states could remove noncitizens “through individualized review.”
Yonkin condemned the ruling.
“This is a stunning ruling by a federal judge ordering Virginia to put people who identify as non-citizens back on the voter rolls,” he told Fox News on Friday.
Wilson countered that Youngkin’s characterization of the program is “incorrect,” given that it also entraps American citizens like her. She said the country’s program is “very, very unfair.”
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last weekend agreed with a lower court’s decision for Virginia. The state then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Virginia allows in-person voter registration up until Election Day, so there is still time for eligible voters to register and vote in the election, regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But some Virginia voters who were mistakenly removed may have missed the opportunity to request an absentee ballot.
The Virginia lawsuit comes during an election period in which former President Donald Trump and Republican leaders have repeated baseless conspiracy theories that noncitizens are poised to vote in large numbers in this election. Critics say this is an effort to sow distrust in elections and lay the groundwork for a potential electoral challenge. Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal and state elections. A limited number of local governments, such as school boards, allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
President Trump has mischaracterized the Justice Department’s lawsuit, claiming it aims to put “illegal voters” back on Virginia’s rolls and commit “fraud” in the upcoming election. There is no evidence to support this claim.
Virginia is one of several Republican-led states in recent months to announce controversial new initiatives aimed at eliminating potential non-citizens, but they are far too broad. Critics say it has also affected the targeted population.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Alabama halted the state’s program to invalidate the registrations of 3,251 people the state suspects may be non-citizens. The Secretary of State’s Office has so far acknowledged that at least 2,074 of these individuals were voters, according to court filings. The judge, a Trump nominee, argued in an Oct. 16 hearing that the state had “a small number of noncitizens, at least four, probably 10, or more, who were somehow registered on Alabama’s voter rolls.” It has been identified as.”
Error from DMV
Another voter, Lina Shaw, 22, from Virginia, didn’t realize her voter registration had been canceled until NPR asked her about her registration status and she checked online.
Shaw, who started voting in 2020, said she recently updated her voter registration at the Virginia Department of Transportation while getting her learner’s permit and discovered the form was “inappropriately designed.” Ta.
She then received a letter from the county elections office informing her that the information from the DMV “may not indicate that she is a U.S. citizen,” so she may not have marked the box that she is a U.S. citizen. . The notice asked her to verify her citizenship, which she did and returned the documents by mail.
Ms Shaw acknowledged that although she did not expect her registration to be cancelled, she had likely missed the 14-day response deadline.
Shaw’s registration appears to have been canceled on Oct. 20, according to a spreadsheet of removed voters filed in court and obtained by NPR.
Shaw said it was “outrageous” that the state excluded voters like him “so close to the election” and gave voters so little time to correct their mistakes. “This is insane. I can’t believe this happened,” Shaw said.
Wilson also went to the DMV to renew her driver’s license shortly before receiving the cancellation notice in the mail. She was later told that she should have checked the box saying she was not a citizen, but she told NPR, “I don’t think I did that.”
Eric Olsen, Prince William County’s elections director, is familiar with the story of the DMV visit that led to a Virginia voter being falsely reported as a possible non-citizen.
The DMV’s driver’s license application has a box at the top above the title that indicates whether you are a citizen. “It just helps people make mistakes or not see information,” Olsen said.
Olsen said that when someone is reported by the state as a possible non-citizen, county officials like his send a notice asking them to verify citizenship and then remove those who don’t respond from the rolls within 14 days. Said it should be automatically deleted.
In May, Olsen reviewed the records of 162 people his office had removed from its roster in the previous year under the program. He said of the 43 people in the group who had previously voted, all had previously identified themselves as U.S. citizens on record, sometimes “three, four, five times.”
If that’s the case, Olsen said, “it’s likely that you just missed this box on the form.”
In a court filing, a lawyer for the state election board denied that Virginians who left the citizenship field blank at the DMV were flagged as being removed from the voter rolls.
Only voters removed after August 7 are subject to a district court order to be reinstated on the rolls.
The citizenship status of all 1,600 voters is unknown at this time. There is no database of U.S. citizens to match. Lawyers representing civil rights groups in the case are trying to contact everyone on the list.
Anna Dorman, an attorney with the voting rights nonprofit Protect Democracy, said she had contacted “a large number” of people on the 1,600-voter list, adding, “Many of these people “There are indications that these are citizens who have been illegally purged under this law.” program. “
Dorman and others spoke with other Americans who visited the DMV just before receiving the cancellation notice from election officials.
Carolina Díaz Tavera, a naturalized U.S. citizen, whose voter registration was canceled but is not on the list of voters removed after Aug. 7, claims in her lawsuit that the state He submitted a statement saying he was concerned about her removal from the voter rolls. The DMV has records from when she was a legal resident when she got her driver’s license.
According to court filings, the Virginia Department of Elections worked with the DMV over the summer to expel people who previously filed non-citizen paperwork through the federal database SAVE and flag people it believes are not citizens. erected.
Dorman said most of the people he has been able to reach so far did not know they had been removed from the voter rolls. “Either they didn’t receive a flyer from the government, or they did and thought it was a scam,” Dorman said.
As for Nadra Wilson, she arranged to leave work early to go to the county board of elections and register to vote.
“I’m grateful that we were able to fix it,” Wilson said.
Wilson decided to vote early and was able to cast her vote during her lunch break on Tuesday.
