On October 1, we released Unnecessary Disenfranchisement: Voter Purges Around the Country, a report detailing our work to monitor and organize against wrongful purges across the country.
Read the full report below for background on the project, our methods, and what we are doing to ensure eligible voters are informed of their voter status as November’s elections draw near.
Allowing political party leaders or other private citizens to have people removed from the list of registered voters would move North Carolina “away from a democratic form of government,” a judge ruled in shooting down the Republican Party’s request.
Posted 10:58 a.m. Oct 18
The Republican Party has failed in its attempt to remove almost a quarter of a million North Carolina voters from the list of registered voters for this year’s elections. A federal judge shot down the party’s request Thursday, the same day early voting began.
The GOP had sought to purge about 225,000 voters, based on what they say are flaws in the voter registration system.
The lawsuit was based on two legal claims. Judge Richard Myers II, the chief district court judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina and an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, ruled against one claim and declined to rule on the other.
He said there’s no reason to believe that either judges or private citizens, including political party leaders, have any right to throw people off the voter rolls in North Carolina. State law explicitly gives that duty to elections officials — who months ago investigated allegations connected to the lawsuit and found nothing.
A ruling in favor of the GOP’s arguments, Myers concluded, could harm American democracy: It “would significantly alter the allocation of power … away from a democratic form of government,” he wrote, citing past legal precedent.
The presidential campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, which had intervened in the lawsuit on the side of the elections board and the 225,000 voters in question, celebrated the ruling. The fact that it came from a Trump-appointed judge, a campaign spokesman said, should leave no doubt in any voters’ mind as to the veracity of the GOP claims.
“They are concocting stories of voter fraud and casting doubt on the election, with no evidence whatsoever,” Harris campaign spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak wrote in a press release.
A spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, which was joined in the lawsuit by the national Republican Party, didn’t immediately provide comment when reached Friday.
Courts in 2020 threw out dozens of lawsuits from the Trump campaign and its allies seeking to cast doubt on the results of that election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Most of those came after the election; this year the GOP has been attempting to make legal claims ahead of the election. The Harris campaign noted that Republicans this week lost other election lawsuits in the swing states of Georgia and Arizona, in addition to this North Carolina case.
“We beat them in court, and we’ll beat them at the ballot box in November,” Lutvak said.
State elections officials this year purged about 750,000 voters from the rolls, mostly due to routine issues such as voters who died or moved away. Republicans sought with this lawsuit to purge another 225,000.
Conservative election integrity activists earlier this year lodged a formal complaint that flaws in the system allowed people to register to vote multiple times, potentially creating the opportunity for fraudulent ballots to be cast.
The State Board of Elections investigated those claims and found them to be false.
In some cases, elections officials said, the activists make mistakes such as thinking fathers and sons with the same name were the same person.
So in a unanimous vote with support from the board’s Democratic and Republican members alike, the Board of Elections dismissed that complaint.
But Republicans kept pressing the issue. Last month the state and national Republican Party groups sued North Carolina, making claims similar to the ones the Board of Elections has already found to be baseless. They asked a judge to throw about 225,000 people off the voter rolls — a solution the state board argued would be illegal even if the GOP accusations were legitimate.
Myers sided with the Board of Elections on one of the two claims, dismissing it. He declined to rule on the other claim, and instead sent down to state court for further legal proceedings.
WIAT Birmingham
Thu, October 17, 2024 at 7:04 PM CDT
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WIAT) — The Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice is encouraging some voters to check their registration status.
The coalition sued Secretary of State Wes Allen after he carried out a program to remove ineligible voters from state voter rolls, which one judge said was done too close to the election.
“I’m a legitimate U.S. citizen,” said Roald Hazelhoff. “All I’m asking for is the most humble of responsibilities. And that’s to vote.”
Hazelhoff became a U.S. citizen two years ago, but he received a letter in the mail stating he needed to re-register to vote and prove he was indeed a U.S. citizen. If not, Hazelhoff would be taken off the voter rolls.
“I’ve been bilingual all my life. I’ve got people that are friends who can help me,” said Hazelhoff.
But how about some of those other three thousand plus people?”
An injunction issued by Judge Anna M. Manasco states that those over 3,200 voters were unlawfully put on a path to removal from state voter rolls– this being within ninety days of an election.
“So, it was really important that this injunction happened as soon as possible,” said Allison Hamilton, executive director for the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice. “And we’re really happy that there’s just, like, three days that the Secretary of State has to reinstate all these voters so that they can definitely vote in the election.”
The coalition is knocking door to door, encouraging Alabamians to vote and check their registration status. But State Rep. Ron Bolton (R-Northport) said voter integrity should be a focus in the state.
“Well, really, I just consider that to be a common function in the purview of the Secretary of State’s office. I feel like Secretary Allen is doing a phenomenal job keeping everything up to date,” said Bolton.
Going into any election, he said it’s important to have a secure system in place.
“And I like to make sure that all this data is correct going into the upcoming election,” said Bolton. “That way, you don’t have to deal with a lot of investigations afterwards.”
In a statement, Secretary Allen said he will comply with the order of the federal court. He also stated that he has a constitutional duty to ensure that only eligible American citizens are voting in our elections.
By now, you probably know who will get your vote for mayor, for your congressional seat, for the U.S. Senate and for president. But do you know whether you’re still an eligible voter?
Will you arrive at your neighborhood precinct on Nov. 5 and discover that you have been excised from the registered voter rolls weeks before election day without notice and with limited recourse?
Voting used to be one of the easiest and most essential privileges we exercise as Americans. As it should be. But nothing in electoral politics is as simple or easy as it used to be.
What Americans once could take for granted now requires more vigilance and self-education by the voter and more work than ever by election officials.
“Voter ID laws in the commonwealth have swung like a pendulum over the last decade,” said Nikki Sheridan, who was a top official overseeing Virginia elections under Republican former Gov. Bob McDonnell. “Responsible administrations spent significant amounts of time and money for outreach and education about voter identification legislative changes, and citizens are saturated — with messages that swing as wildly and frequently as the law changed.”
This fall, in the stretch run of the bitterly contested election, there’s a new wrinkle: Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 11th-hour order to have elections officials scour Virginia’s voter rolls hunting for noncitizens, an action that the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Oct. 14 to halt.
The National Voter Registration Act forbids removing voters within 90 days of federal elections, a time known as the “Quiet Period.” Youngkin issued Executive Order 35 commencing the process on Aug. 7, exactly 90 days before the election.
It marked the second time in a week the state was sued in federal court over Youngkin’s action. The League of Women Voters and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights allege in their Oct. 7 complaint that the way Virginia purges its rolls violates the federal law’s protections.
Youngkin’s order, in large part, restates ongoing and uncontroversial best practices and statutory requirements for safeguarding the security of ballots and those casting them. That includes the universal use of paper ballots to provide a lasting record of a voter’s intent, a strict chain of custody of early ballots and ensuring that computerized counting machines are not linked to the internet to avoid the possibility of remote hacking.
Then the order directs extraordinary efforts to bar noncitizens from voting, a step an ambitious Republican politico like Youngkin would take as a matter of course to stoke a favored paranoia among his party’s base.
The governor has boasted of removing 6,303 people from Virginia’s voter rolls since he took office. On its face, that’s a good thing. Cleansing the voter rolls of noncitizens is required by a 2006 state law signed by then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat. Evidently, the law works.
According to the Washington Post, no noncitizen has attempted to vote in Virginia since Youngkin became governor. The Post also reports that only three people have been prosecuted in the commonwealth for illegal voting of any kind from January of 2022 through July of this year. That’s hardly massive election fraud.
Enforcing laws that reserve voting in U.S. elections exclusively to U.S. citizens has been a year-round pursuit, according to Chris Piper, who was Virginia’s commissioner of elections from 2018 to 2022 and is now executive director of the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit and nonpartisan data source about state politics and government.
Virginia was among the states whose election legislation required Justice Department preclearance under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 until 2013 when it was ended by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Congress passed the law during the Civil Rights Era to prevent state and local governments, mostly in the South, from erecting barriers to Black Americans’ right to vote. Piper said the Justice Department approved Virginia’s 2006 statute with the unwritten understanding that it would not apply during the Quiet Period.
Youngkin’s order echoes the persistent drumbeat of former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump’s pre-emptive and baseless election fraud assertions. They’re rooted in his Big Lie and subsequent legal challenges based on it that got bounced out of courthouse after courthouse — 63 in all — following his re-election defeat four years ago. But it remains a battle cry among Trump’s deluded disciples.
The most vexing consequence of Youngkin’s order, which its critics call a “purge,” is that it’s much more likely to harm legitimate voters, regardless of party, through paperwork errors and bureaucratic snafus than it is to block illicit interlopers from voting. All it takes is for a bona fide citizen to fail to check the right box on a Department of Motor Vehicles form to trigger their removal.
Once that error is in the system, as Markus Schmidt and Charlotte Renee Woods of The Mercury reported, there is no obligation by either the State Department of Elections or local elections officers to vet and validate the information before a voter’s registration is terminated. Often, a voter isn’t aware of it until she or he tries to cast a ballot.
By then, the remedy is to re-register (which, thankfully, is possible up to Election Day) and cast a provisional ballot that is subject to scrutiny and perhaps a challenge after the polls close, said Piper and Sheridan.
Beyond that, Sheridan noted, is the increasingly rancorous process of counting (and sometimes recounting) the results. What used to be a dispassionate mathematical exercise has become snarled in partisan gamesmanship and bizarre conspiracy fantasies, a product of Trump’s toxic and unrelenting election denialism.
In Prince William County, for instance, a prosecution led by Virginia’s GOP-led attorney general’s office against the county registrar over alleged 2020 election improprieties disintegrated once it reached local courts and was dismissed. Yesterday, the former registrar, a professional election administrator named Michele White, sued Attorney General Jason Miyares and others in his office in U.S. District Court alleging malicious prosecution.
“A major shift apparent to me is a lack of civility, often accompanied by an operating assumption that our election officials lack integrity or credibility,” said Sheridan, now a fulltime mom to 5-year-old twins and a volunteer for civic causes in Fluvanna County.
“Numerous recent recounts affirm that election results in Virginia are accurate and rarely change the outcome of an election. Infrequent mistakes are human, and allowances must be made. A new registrar, or a seasoned registrar adjusting to a legislative change, is neither a conspiracy participant nor the devil,” Sheridan said.
To illustrate her point, she contrasted two recounts in which she was involved, both in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. One, in 2008, affirmed Democrat Tom Perriello’s thin general election victory over Republican incumbent Virgil Goode. The other was this June’s vicious GOP primary battle in which Trump-supported challenger John McGuire ousted House Freedom Caucus leader Bob Good by 366 votes out of 62,802 cast.
As an observer in the 2008 recount, Sheridan eventually struck up a friendship with a Democrat who was part of Perriello’s team, she said. In this summer’s recount, she was the target of withering vituperation from fellow Republicans that included a cyberbullying effort.
“It is unfortunate, but I observed the process primarily to defend it mightily against those who may deny the outcome because they do not like it,” she said. “That is not how electoral democracy works.”
Even so, Virginia elections are clean, fair and secure. Check your registration status before you head to your polling place. If you get there and find you were mistakenly removed from rolls, seek a provisional ballot. But whatever you do, exercise your right as a citizen: vote.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Monday that 6,500 noncitizens were removed from the Lone Star State’s voter rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential race, following several other Republican-led states that have done so in recent weeks.
Republicans have celebrated the removal of noncitizens from voter rolls as a victory for election security after previously raising concerns about migrants voting in U.S. elections. Critics, however, have accused conservatives of overstating the issue of migrants illegally voting, arguing that while it does happen from time to time, the phenomenon remains rare.
Abbott announced on Monday that more than one million voters, including 6,500 noncitizens, have been removed from the state’s voter rolls.
Others removed from the voter rolls included 6,000 voters convicted of a felony, more than 457,000 people who have died, 463,000 voters on the suspense list, 134,000 who responded to a confirmation notice indicating they have moved, 65,000 who did not respond to a notice of examination and 19,000 who requested to cancel their registration.
“The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have an ongoing legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution. Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated,” Abbot said in a statement.
Several other states have recently removed noncitizens from their voting rolls.
Newsweek reached out to officials in each state for additional comment via email.
In Alabama, Secretary of State Wes Allen wrote in an August 13 press release that he identified 3,251 noncitizens registered to vote in the state and ordered county officials to inactivate those voters.
“I have been clear that I will not tolerate the participation of noncitizens in our elections,” Allen said. “I have even gone so far as to testify before a United States Senate Committee regarding the importance of this issue. We have examined the current voter file in an attempt to identify anyone who appears on that list that has been issued a noncitizen identification number.”
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry issued an order on Monday targeting noncitizen voting, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.
His order required states offering registration forms to include a notice that noncitizen voters, as well as ordering the Office of Motor Vehicles to make a list of people in the state who were issued temporary identification, which Secretary of State Nancy Landry will check.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, announced earlier in August that 597 noncitizens have been removed from the state’s voter rolls. That number includes 138 who appeared to cast a ballot in elections despite not having citizenship.
“I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country do not vote in our elections,” LaRose said in a statement. “We’ve so far identified 597 individuals who’ve registered to vote in Ohio despite not being citizens of the United States, as our state constitution requires.”
Earlier in 2024, LaRose removed nearly 155,000 voters who appeared to be abandoned and inactive for at least four consecutive years from the state’s voter rolls.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has also removed noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls.
“The Virginia model for Election Security works. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted without being watered down by illegal votes or inaccurate machines. In Virginia, we don’t play games and our model for election security is working,” Youngkin said in a statement.
In an executive order, he wrote that 6,303 non-citizens were removed from the voter rolls between January 2022 and July 2024.
NBC News reported that some of the possible noncitizens may have been due to individuals’ errors when registering to vote. Youngkin’s announcement sparked praise from former President Donald Trump, who wrote in a Truth Social post that the governor is “taking a strong lead in securing the election in November.”
UPDATED SEPTEMBER 27, 20246:33 PM ET
The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit Friday against Alabama and its top election official, alleging a state program violated federal law by removing voters from its election rolls too close to this fall’s general election.
While states can remove a person’s name from their lists of registered voters if, for example, the person asks to be taken off, has died or, in many places, been convicted of certain crimes, the National Voter Registration Act sets what’s known as a “quiet period” before federal elections for most states.
Alabama and other states covered by the federal law are not allowed to systematically remove names fewer than 90 days before a federal election.
On Aug. 13, 84 days before this fall’s Election Day, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, announced an effort to “remove noncitizens registered to vote” in the state. According to a press release, Allen identified and instructed county election officials to remove from their voter rolls 3,251 registered Alabama voters who had been “issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security.”
Allen also acknowledged in the press release that “some of the individuals who were issued noncitizen identification numbers have, since receiving them, become naturalized citizens and are, therefore, eligible to vote.” Those U.S. citizens would be able to update their voter registration information, the statement added.
But in a statement, the Justice Department characterized this process as a “systematic voter removal program” that has ensnared U.S. citizens, both those born in the United States and those who were naturalized, and put them on a path to no longer appearing on Alabama’s voter registration list.
In August, NPR spoke with a voter who was born in Alabama and received a notice from election officials that his registration had been flagged and he was “on the path for removal from the statewide voter list.”
In an email statement on Friday, Allen declined to comment on the Justice Department’s lawsuit.
Alabama is facing a similar lawsuit filed this month by voting rights groups and citizens in Alabama represented by attorneys led by the Campaign Legal Center.
In an earlier email responding to a notice letter from those groups, Allen wrote: “I will not bow down to threats from ultra-liberal activist groups who will stop at nothing in their quest to see noncitizens remain on Alabama’s voter rolls.”
The August effort from Allen comes as Republicans across the country call for new restrictions to ensure non-U.S. citizens aren’t casting ballots in U.S. elections. It’s already against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and proven instances of noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare.
By Tierney Sneed, CNN
Published 8:40 PM EDT, Fri October 11, 2024
The Biden administration sued Virginia election officials Friday, alleging that they were violating federal law by purging voters flagged as potential noncitizens during the so-called quiet period before an election, when electoral officials are forbidden from undertaking systematic removals of voters from registration rolls.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a similar Justice Department challenge to a move by Alabama officials to initiate removals of voters from the rolls. Republicans have made the alleged threat of noncitizen voting a central focus of the 2024 campaign, though instances of noncitizens casting ballots are extremely rare.
In court filings Friday, the Justice Department said that Virginia’s purge program, formalized in an August executive order by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, violates the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement that any mass voter removal program be completed no later than 90 days before the election.
Youngkin’s executive order was rolled out exactly 90 days before the election, but the Justice Department is pointing to indications that removals under the order have been ongoing since.
The executive order directed local election officials to initiate removals of any voters who indicated on DMV forms that they were noncitizens. Those voters are sent mailers giving them 14 days to affirm their citizenship or have their registrations canceled.
Earlier iterations of the program caused likely citizens to be removed from the rolls, the DOJ alleged in its lawsuit, pointing to recent comments by a county election official who said that they looked at dozens of voters who had been purged under the program’s protocols and found that many of them had repeatedly affirmed their citizenship, including some with social security numbers.
The lawsuit said that local election officials have no discretion under the program to prevent the cancellation of voters who fail to return the notices even if officials have reason to believe that those voters are US citizens.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Youngkin accused the Biden administration of “filing an unprecedented lawsuit” less than 30 days out from the election.
“Virginians – and Americans – will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” Youngkin said, while promising to defend the policy.
By SARA CLINEbUpdated 4:42 PM CDT, August 26, 2024
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana is the latest red state to announce additional measures to ensure that non-U.S. citizens are not voting in elections, despite it already being illegal and there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed an executive order Monday requiring all state government agencies that provide voter registration forms to include a written disclaimer that noncitizens are prohibited from registering to vote or voting.
“The right to vote in United States elections is a privilege that’s reserved for American citizens,” Landry said during Monday’s press conference.
The governor, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was accompanied by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and Secretary of State Nancy Landry, who oversees elections in the state.
The press conference was similar to those happening across the country in other Republican-led states as GOP messaging, leading up to this year’s presidential election, has focused on election integrity over the specter of immigrants voting illegally in the U.S.
On a national level, the U.S. House passed in July a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration, a proposal prioritized by Republicans. Democrats and voting rights activists opposed the bill, saying that preexisting legislation makes it a federal crime to vote as a noncitizen, and voicing concerns that eligible voters will be disenfranchised.
States have also announced new policies. Earlier this month, Alabama officials announced that more than 3,200 registered voters — who have previously been identified as noncitizens by the federal government — will have their registration status changed to inactive. The list could include people who have become naturalized U.S. citizens and as such are legally eligible to vote. Those listed as inactive will have the opportunity to update their information, providing proof of citizenship.
Similarly, Tennessee election officials in June asked more than 14,000 people to provide proof of citizenship to remain on active-voter rolls. They later walked back that request.
Nancy Landry said 48 noncitizens have been removed from Louisiana’s voter rolls since 2022.
“To be clear, I’m confident in the policies and procedures that my office has in place to ensure the accuracy of our voter rolls and the integrity of our elections,” she said.
“However, I will not let confidence turn into complacency,” the Republican added.
by Elizabeth Crisp – 08/27/24 12:51 PM ET
More than a million people have been removed from Texas’s voter registration rolls since the last presidential election, the state announced Monday.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a statement that the removals represent an effort to “protect the right to vote and to crackdown on illegal voting.”
“These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state,” Abbott said. “Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”
About half of the voters removed have died, requested to be be taken off or are living in another state, based on figures from the governor’s office. Nearly 7,000 were noncitizens who had registered illegally, and about 6,000 were convicted felons unable to vote.
About 463,000 were on what Texas calls its “suspense list,” where counties place voters who don’t respond to requested certification forms.
The removal effort is part of a sweeping package of voting restrictions the Texas Legislature passed after the 2020 presidential election. At the time, Abbott said the law would make it “easier to vote and harder to cheat” in the Lone Star State.
Critics argue it disproportionately affects voters of color and voters with disabilities.
According to the governor’s office, of the nearly 6,500 noncitizens removed from the voter rolls, about 1,930 have a voter history. Those cases will be referred to the Attorney General’s office for possible felony charges.
Texas, along with other mostly Republican-controlled states, passed a raft of new voting restrictions after President Biden beat former President Trump in the 2020 election, which saw a 50-year record turnout and a surge in mail-in and early ballots. Several local jurisdictions, including Harris County, Texas’s most populous county, had adopted new access measures during that election cycle in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Among other provisions, the Texas law that has allowed the removal of a million voters also sets statewide voting hours, prohibits drive-through voting methods that were used for safety during the coronavirus outbreak and gives poll watchers more access to observe the election process. It also bans the mass distribution of mail-in ballot applications.