Virginia Gov Youngkin’s voter purge sparks debate: Noncitizens or errors impacting election process?
Local Virginia officials attributed much of the presence of possible noncitizens on the voter rolls to errors made when people fill out paperwork or answer questions online.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said earlier this month he had issued an executive order removing 6,303 noncitizens who had “accidentally or maliciously attempted to register” to vote.
He said in an interview that he was “not suggesting there is widespread voter fraud,” but had said in an earlier interview, “Call me crazy, but I think American elections should be decided by American citizens.”
The news quickly spread. Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson and others praised Youngkin’s order, in tweets and retweets, saying he was keeping “illegals,” “illegal aliens” or “noncitizens” from voting.
Yet the governor’s Aug. 7 order didn’t state whether any of the 6,303 people removed from the voter rolls over the past 18 months were noncitizens who actually voted or if there was an error and they later turned out to be citizens. His office didn’t provide that information when asked by NBC News.
But months before Election Day, the Republican rhetoric around “noncitizen voting” is propagating the falsehood that masses of undocumented immigrants are voting in U.S. elections, according to voting, civil and immigrant rights groups. Such rhetoric contributes to the erosion of confidence in the electoral process, the groups say.
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