Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vowed to make sure the presidential election in the commonwealth would be fair, safe and accurate in response to a lawsuit by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over his efforts to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls.
The DOJ is suing Virginia for purging noncitizens from the voting rolls, which Youngkin vowed to fight during an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” Monday night.
“The Department of Justice is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia because someone who self-identified as a noncitizen is being removed from the voter roll unless they prove that they are a citizen and affirm so,” Youngkin said.
THOUSANDS OF NONCITIZENS REMOVED FROM VOTER ROLLS, DOZENS OF LAWMAKERS WANT ANSWERS FROM GARLAND
Glenn Youngkin (Fox News)
In the lawsuit, the DOJ is claiming that Youngkin violated the National Voter Registration Act with an executive order that required the election commissioner to regularly update the state’s voter lists to remove individuals who have been “identified as noncitizens” and did not respond to a request to verify their citizenship in 14 days.
Virginia has announced that it has removed more than 6,000 individuals between Jan. 2022 and July 2024.
In a memo obtained by Fox News Digital, the governor’s office called the DOJ’s move an “unprecedented lawsuit” that targets the state “for appropriately enforcing a Virginia law, signed by then-Gov. Tim Kaine in 2006, that requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls – a process that begins when an individual themselves indicates they are a noncitizen during a DMV transaction.”
“That bill was signed in 2006 and it requires us to use DMV data where people self-identify as non-citizens to then go through a process of removing them from the voter rolls if they’re on the voter rolls. And guess what? That’s exactly what we’ve been doing, it’s been happening for 18 years,” Youngkin said. “Democratic governors, even Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, used this process all the way up through into October and that’s exactly what we’re doing in Virginia today.”
He explained that if an individual walks into the DMV and identifies themselves as a noncitizen, but are somehow, either by accident or by purpose, registered to vote and end up on the voter roll, they go through the process of notifying the registrar that if the person cannot affirm their citizenship in 14 days, they’re taken off the voter roll.
“This is the process that the Department of Justice, 25 days before a presidential election, turns around and says: ‘You must stop doing this,’ and that is unbelievable to me,” Younkin said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
“To me, this is unprecedented, and I think it represents a Department of Justice that is trying to achieve something other than fair and free elections,” he added.
Youngkin said Virginia removed 80,000 dead people from voter rolls in 2023 and, since he has been in office, there have been 6,300 circumstances where somebody walked into the DMV, identified themselves as a non-citizen and ended up on the voter roll.
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Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.