Dozens of people in the greater Charlottesville area have been purged from voter rolls ahead of Election Day this Tuesday at the direction of Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Youngkin’s executive order calling for daily cleanups of voter rolls ahead of the election prompted legal challenges from the U.S. Department of Justice, the League of Women Voters and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Youngkin has argued that those removed are not legal citizens, as determined by Department of Motor Vehicle data. His opponents have argued that his order violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires systematic removals of voters occur at least 90 days before a federal election.
Lower courts which sided with the Justice Department and its allies were overruled Wednesday, when the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold Youngkin’s order.
As a result, 16 people have been purged from voter lists in Albemarle County, 11 in the city of Charlottesville and seven across the surrounding counties of Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Orange. None of those voters responded to Daily Progress inquiries.
The numbers in the Charlottesville area pale in comparison to what was recorded in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County alone had 293 people purged from its voter rolls.
Still, in a state where over 4 million people cast a ballot in 2020, 1,600 people is unlikely to make a meaningful impact on Election Day. At the same time, multiple people have already started to come forward claiming their names were purged from voter rolls even though they are legal citizens of the United States.
Those people will still have an opportunity to cast a ballot, according to election officials.
That’s because in 2022 the state began to allow same-day voter registration.
A purged voter — or any other U.S. citizen — can register at their polling place on Election Day. They will need to provide a form of identification, such as a driver’s license, and can then vote with a provisional ballot.
Provisional ballots are not immediately processed by a vote-counting machine. Instead, they must first be approved by the local electoral board, a three-person body tasked with helping to administer elections. The decision is made after reviewing evidence gathered by the general registrar’s office regarding the voter’s eligibility. The voter is entitled to be at the meeting where that decision is made, but attendance is not required. Voters that cast a provisional ballot will be notified by their general registrar if their ballot is not counted.
Voter fraud in Virginia — which remains extremely rare — is a Class 6 felony that carries a punishment of up to five years in prison.
With just 16 purged voters in Albemarle County, Bruce Kirtley, chair of the county’s Democratic Party, does not expect it to have any impact. It’s a relatively small number of voters, he said. He also noted that voter registration in Virginia is not done by party; it’s unclear how many of the affected are Republican or Democrat.
Kirtley theorizes that Youngkin, a Republican, is hoping to sow seeds of doubt regarding the integrity of the election; Donald Trump continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was rigged against him and has already claimed, without evidence, that Democrats are cheating this time around. While Youngkin distanced himself when he was running for governor, he has since come to embrace the former president and current GOP presidential candidate.
“It just seems like another effort to suppress votes, and the thinking on our end is that Youngkin is just trying to appeal to Trump,” Kirtley said. “They’re trying to lay a predicate for there being issues. I don’t think it’ll be enough in Virginia, but you can imagine it having an effect in Pennsylvania, Georgia and swing states like that.”
In a Wednesday statement, Younkin declared the Supreme Court’s ruling a victory. Clean voter rolls, he said, are part of a comprehensive approach to ensuring fair elections.
“Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, counting machines not connected to the internet, a strong chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secured drop boxes, and a ‘triple check’ vote counting process to tabulate results,” Youngkin said. “Virginians can cast their ballots on Election Day knowing that Virginia’s elections are fair, secure, and free from politically-motivated interference.”
The Democrats Kirtley has spoken to aren’t particularly mad about the purge. If it affected a larger group of people, and if legal voters were being turned away from the polls, he suspects voters would be more upset.
“We’re all about voter integrity, but we’re also about letting people vote,” Kirtley said. “One man one vote, how more basic can you get?”
Kirtley said Democrats in the area are incredibly motivated this election cycle.
“People are fired up, and they’re getting fired up over little things, like, ‘Someone stole a sign out of my yard,’” Kirtley said.
Albemarle County general registrar Lauren Eddy told The Daily Progress only one person has approached her office claiming to be among the purged voters.
“We had a person who said they had a letter from the governor [saying she’d been removed] but she didn’t have the letter with her,” Eddy said. “There’s a bit of a gray area on how these voters have been contacted and who has contacted them.”
But there is no gray area about voter enthusiasm. She expected that by Saturday, the final day of early in-person voting, the early voting numbers will exceed the numbers Albemarle County recorded in 2020.
“We’re doing over 1,000 people every day,” she said. “Business is booming.”
Election Day is Tuesday.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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