Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing Virginia organizations and individuals in a lawsuit challenging Virginia’s last-minute, systematic and discriminatory voter purge program that relies on faulty and outdated data. The purge program particularly targets naturalized citizens, who are entitled to exercise their fundamental freedom to vote without barriers, like all U.S. citizens.
Back to topAfter a year and a half of litigation, Virginia voters can finally register to vote without fear that they will be illegally purged from voter rolls on the eve of an election.
Following a lawsuit filed by Campaign Legal Center and a pro-voter coalition to end an illegal voter purge before the 2024 president election, voters have agreed to a...
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) bans voter purges (the systematic removal of voters) within 90 days of an election. This period is referred to as a “quiet period.” The NVRA also requires list maintenance programs to be uniform and nondiscriminatory. On the very first day of the quiet period for the 2024 general election, then-Governor Youngkin directed the Department of Elections (ELECT) to escalate its list maintenance procedures to identify and purge voters on a systematic and ongoing daily basis.
Since then, many Americans have come forward after being wrongfully and unfairly removed from the voter rolls.
The challenged purge program, a function of both executive order and statute, directs ELECT to rely on Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) data that is often faulty and outdated, especially for naturalized citizens. Virginia drivers’ licenses are available to residents who are not U.S. citizens and can remain valid for up to eight years. This means that someone could obtain a driver’s license as a non-U.S. citizen, subsequently become a U.S. citizen, and lawfully register to vote, but still be identified as a noncitizen in the DMV data.
In addition, voters are often rushed through electronic transactions at the DMV and can inadvertently check the wrong box. This is especially impactful for voters for whom English is not their primary language.
Virginia’s fix is to send a single notice to voters; if the voter doesn’t respond within 14 days of it being sent, they are purged, and the state makes no further effort to investigate or confirm whether the voter is eligible. This process does not adequately safeguard against mistakes and violates the NVRA’s protections against voter purges.
This lawsuit comes on the heels of a letter CLC wrote demanding that Virginia stop its illegal purge program.
What’s At Stake
There are already strict laws in place that ensure only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. The safeguards we already have in place, including strict criminal punishment, financial penalties and possible deportation, ensure that only eligible citizens register and vote.
Last-minute voter purges that occur on the eve of Election Day, when early voting is already underway, inevitably deny qualified Americans their freedom to vote.
When Congress passed the NVRA in 1993, it ensured that regardless of the theories state officials may come up with to remove registered voters just before an election, states are almost always banned from doing so under the legislation. And Congress also ensured that voters would be protected against nonuniform and discriminatory voter purges at any time.
Voter purges tend to target voters of color and naturalized citizens, undermining their fundamental freedom to vote. Our democracy works best when every voter can make their voice heard, but Virginia’s unfair, illegal voter purge program puts many Virginians’ freedom to vote in jeopardy.
CLC filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, League of Women Voters of Virginia, African Communities Together, and two individual Virginia voters who were unlawfully purged from the voter rolls. Our partners include Advancement Project, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Protect Democracy.
