Justice Department Suing Virginia for Removing Noncitizens from Voter Rolls?

On Oct. 14, 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, alleging that the Justice Department had brought a lawsuit against the commonwealth of Virginia to block the state from removing “illegal voters” from the voter rolls. The claim was also shared by some of Trump’s political allies, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

Snopes found that the claim was based on some truth, but that it was misleading and needed context, so we rated it a mixture of truth and falsehood. 

It is true that Youngkin signed an executive order that included a provision specifically requesting the state to audit its voter rolls for potential noncitizen voters. It also is true that the Department of Justice sued Virginia because of this executive order. However, it is not true that the lawsuit was brought to block Virginia from removing suspected noncitizens from its voting rolls. 

The claim’s phrasing implies that noncitizen voting is a common problem that would have gone unchecked without the order. It is not. Snopes has published a detailed investigation into Trump’s claims of noncitizen voting and found that it is an almost nonexistent problem. Furthermore, Snopes found that almost all cases of noncitizens attempting to register to vote are discovered in the registration process, before a voter’s name even makes it onto a voter roll.

The real reason the Department of Justice sued Virginia is because, under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, all programs which “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the list of ineligible voters” must be completed 90 days before a federal election. The law is written this way as a way to prevent last-minute purges of voter rolls that could lead to otherwise eligible voters being barred from casting a ballot. It also allows exceptions if a voter asks to be removed, if a voter dies, if the voter is found guilty of a crime and would no longer be eligible to vote or if the voter is found to be mentally incapable. 

Youngkin’s executive order calling for the audit was signed exactly 90 days before the 2024 presidential election, meaning that election officials would not have had time to review their databases before the deadline. The Justice Department also brought a similar lawsuit against Alabama. 

Sources