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A federal judge barred Virginia from purging its voter rolls of possible noncitizens and ordered the state to return removed voters from the list, saying the action violates a law that prohibits states from cleaning out the lists within 90 days of a presidential election, according to reports.
“What I find is a clear violation of the 90-day quiet provision,” U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said in court Friday, the Washington Post reported. “It is not happenstance that this executive order was announced on the 90th day.”
Giles prohibited Virginia from “continuing any systematic program intended to remove the names of ineligible voters” through Nov. 5 and ordered 1,600 registered voters returned to the rolls.
The judge pushed back at claims she was restoring voting rights of noncitizens, asserting that Virginia did not have proof that removed voters were noncitizens but went ahead and purged them anyway.
“I’m not dealing with beliefs,” she told a lawyer for Virginia when he referred to those stricken from the rolls as noncitizens, the Associated Press reported. “I’m dealing with evidence.”
The Department of Justice had argued that the voter purging violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that set out a 90-day quiet period before the presidential election that restricts states from making extensive changes to voter rolls.
The judge rejected arguments from lawyers for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, who signed an executive order to purge the voter rolls on Aug. 7, the Washington Post reported.
It mandated the removal of registered voters who marked a box on their driver’s license applications designating they were not U.S. citizens.
But eligible voters who either passed over or simply missed the question have been included in the purge, the newspaper reported.
In addition, others may have become citizens years after their first encounter with the Department of Motor Vehicles, according to the report.
Youngkin said he would appeal the decision, and Donald Trump railed that was proof of a “truly Weaponized Department of ‘Injustice.'”
