US citizens are among the voters removed in the controversial purge in Virginia

Nadra Wilson of Lynchburg, Virginia, was concerned and confused when she received a letter in the mail from local election officials informing her that her U.S. citizenship was in question.

The message stated that she must confirm that she was a U.S. citizen within 14 days or her voter registration would be canceled. It was first sent to an old address and then forwarded. By the time Wilson received it in October, the deadline had passed.

But Wilson was surprised by the letter. “I was born in Brooklyn, NY — I’m a citizen,” Wilson said in an interview with NPR before showing her U.S. passport as proof.

Wilson, who works in health care, moved to Virginia nine years ago and first registered to vote before the 2016 election.

The U.S. Supreme Court could rule as soon as Tuesday afternoon on an emergency request to block a lower court ruling ordering the state to add Wilson and some 1,600 other registered voters to Virginia’s rolls. According to the lower court, a voter purge program removed them from the state’s registration list, in violation of federal law. The state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has said the program enforces a 2006 state law and removes noncitizens who are ineligible to vote. He brought an Augustus executive order requiring county election officials to remove suspected noncitizens flagged by the state on a daily basis.

But as the stories of Wilson and other voters show, the program has also unfairly entrapped American citizens who are eligible to vote.

An emergency petition to the US Supreme Court

Civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia over the program earlier this month.

Virginia asks the Supreme Court to intervene in U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled Friday that the state program violated federal law by systematically removing voters who are too close to a federal election.

Under the National Voter Registration Act, states must pause certain types of voter roll maintenance programs that systematically remove voters during the 90 days before an election to ensure mistakes aren’t made too close to the election. The so-called quiet period started this year on August 7, the same day Youngkin issued his executive order.

Giles, who was nominated by President Biden, ordered Virginia to reinstate the 1,600 electors dismissed on Wednesday. Her order also said the state could still remove nonresidents “through individualized assessment.”

Youngkin overturned the ruling.

“This is a stunning ruling from a federal judge directing Virginia to reinstate individuals who have identified themselves as noncitizens on the voter rolls,” he said. told Fox News on Friday.

Wilson countered that Youngkin “isn’t right” in the way he has characterized the program, as it has also ensnared American citizens like her. She described the state program as “very, very unfair.”

Last weekend, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to the lower court’s ruling against Virginia. The state then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Because Virginia allows it in-person voter registration through Election Daythere is still time for eligible voters to register and vote in the election, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.

Still, some Virginia voters who were wrongfully removed may have missed the opportunity to request an absentee ballot.

The Virginia lawsuit comes during a campaign season that has seen former President Donald Trump and Republican leaders repeat themselves baseless conspiracy theories where non-citizens are about to vote these elections in large numbers. Critics say it is an attempt to sow distrust in the election and lay the groundwork for possible electoral challenges. Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal and state elections. A limited number of places allow non-residents to vote in local elections, such as school board.

Trump has mischaracterized the Justice Department’s lawsuit by claiming the agency aims to reinstate “illegal voters” in Virginia and “cheat” in the upcoming elections. There is no evidence to support the claim.

Virginia is one of several Republican-led states that have announced this controversial new initiatives in recent months it was claimed this would remove potential non-citizens, but critics said it was too broad and also affected eligible citizens.

A federal judge in Alabama dropped out earlier this month that state’s program to inactivate the registrations of 3,251 people the state suspected might be noncitizens. The Secretary of State has so far acknowledged that at least 2,074 of these individuals were eligible to vote, according to court documents. The judge — a Trump nominee — said during an Oct. 16 hearing that the state “identified a handful, at least four, maybe 10, maybe more, of noncitizens who were somehow on Alabama’s voter rolls .”

Errors from the DMV

Another Virginia voter, 22-year-old Rina Shaw, who said she was born in the state, had not realized her voter registration had been canceled until NPR asked her about her registration status and she checked it online.

Shaw, who started voting in 2020, said she recently updated her voter registration with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles when she got her learner’s permit and found the form was “poorly designed.”

She likely did not indicate that she was a U.S. citizen because she subsequently received a letter from her county elections office informing her that information from the DMV indicated she “may not be a U.S. citizen.” The notice asked her to confirm her citizenship, which she did, and then she returned the form.

Shaw acknowledged that she had likely missed the 14-day deadline to respond, although she did not expect her registration to be canceled.

According to a spreadsheet of purged voters filed with the court and obtained by NPR, it appears Shaw’s registration was canceled on Oct. 20.

Shaw called it “outrageous” that the state removed voters like her “so close to the election” and gave voters so little time to correct the mistake. “It’s crazy, I can’t believe this happened,” Shaw said.

Wilson had also gone to the DMV to renew her driver’s license not long before she received her termination letter in the mail. She said she was later told she had checked a box saying she was not a citizen, but told NPR, “I don’t believe I did that.”

Prince William County Elections Director Eric Olsen is familiar with stories of DMV visits that resulted in Virginia voters being incorrectly flagged as potential non-citizens.

The RDW driving license application has boxes at the very top, above the title, where people can indicate whether they are citizens or not. Olsen said, “It just lends itself to people making mistakes or not seeing the information.”

Olsen said that if someone is labeled by the state as a possible noncitizen, county offices like his should send notices asking them to confirm their citizenship and then automatically remove from the list anyone who does not respond within 14 days.

In May, Olsen reviewed data on the 162 people his office had delisted under the program over the past year. He said that of the 43 people in that group who had previously voted, all had confirmed in previous documents that they were U.S. citizens, sometimes “three, four or five times.”

In those cases, Olsen said, “we assume that they most likely just missed this box on the form.”

Lawyers for state election officials denied in court documents that Virginians who left the citizenship box at the DMV blank were flagged for removal from voter rolls.

Only voters removed after August 7 are subject to the district court order for reinstatement.

The citizenship status of all 1,600 voters is currently unknown. There is no database of US citizens to check. Attorneys representing civil rights groups in the lawsuit have attempted to contact everyone on the list.

Anna Dorman, an attorney with the nonprofit Protect Democracy that advocates for voting rights, said she has reached “numerous” citizens on the list of 1,600 voters and said there are signs “many of these people are citizens who are eligible under this law have been unlawfully purged’. program.”

Dorman and her colleagues spoke to other U.S. citizens who visited the DMV just before receiving cancellation notices from election officials.

Carolina Diaz Tavera, a naturalized U.S. citizen whose voter registration was canceled but who does not appear on the list of voters removed after August 7, filed a statement in the lawsuit saying she is concerned that the state has removed her from the voter rolls due to outdated voter lists. DMV records since she was a legal resident when she got her driver’s license.

The Virginia Department of Elections worked with the DMV last summer to redirect people who had previously filed non-citizen documents a federal database, SAVEand flagged people who did not appear to be citizens, according to court documents.

Dorman said most of the people she was able to reach did not know they had been removed from the voter rolls. “They either never got the flyer from the government, or they got it and thought it was a scam,” Dorman said.

As for Nadra Wilson, she arranged to leave work early so she could go to her county elections board and get her voter registration in order.

“I’m grateful I was able to fix it,” Wilson said.

Wilson decided to vote early and was able to cast her vote during her lunch break on Tuesday.