Saying that the effort to purge Virginia’s voting rolls of non-citizens is unconstitutionally dragging rightfully-registered citizens into its overly-broad net, the US Justice Department filed suit against the Commonwealth saying citizens’ registrations have been unjustly canceled, NBC News reports.
Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin started a program where people registered to vote whose information matches that of people on a known “non-citizen” list, the state sends a notice to the registered voter to confirm their identity within fourteen days of their name would be stricken from the voter registry.
The DOJ said that the continuation and promotion of the program is meant to remove people during a 90-day period before the election, an effort to make it harder for people to stay registered. “The Commonwealth’s unlawful actions here have likely confused, deterred, and removed U.S. citizens who are fully eligible to vote —the very scenario that Congress tried to prevent when it enacted the Quiet Period Provision,” the DOJ wrote.