Youngkin Defends Virginia Removing Non-Citizens From Voter Rolls: ‘This Is Common Sense’

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin defended his decision to remove non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls in accordance with state law that was passed by Democrats, saying that doing so was “common sense.”

Youngkin made the remarks during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper this week in response to the Biden-Harris administration filing a lawsuit to stop Youngkin from removing non-citizens from the rolls within 90 days of an election.

“First and foremost, this is a law that’s been on our books since 2006,” Youngkin said. “It was a law that was signed by then Democrat Governor Tim Kaine, and it requires our election process and governors to use DMV data when an individual self-identifies as a non-citizen and there is a match with that person on the voter rolls to then notify that person that they have 14 days to affirm that they’re a citizen or not, and if they’re not, then they are removed.”

“This process has been in place since 2006. We just had recent Democrat governors like Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam use this exact same process within the 90-day period because it is individualized,” he continued. “An individual starts the process by self-identifying as a non-citizen. And therefore, as governor, I have an obligation, no discretion, to then run the process to notify that person through our registrar that they have 14 days to clear it up. And if they don’t clear it up, they’re gonna be removed from the voter rolls.”

 

Youngkin noted that the Biden-Harris administration could have filed their lawsuit against the state months ago so that it could be brought to a resolution before Election Day, but instead waited more than two months to file it.

“This seems far more political than otherwise simply because of the fact this has been going on since 2006 according to law and they chose 25 days before an election in Virginia in order to assert something which really is inconsistent with the process that we’re doing,” he said.

Youngkin said that the state has removed more than 6,300 non-citizens from the voter rolls, people who self-identified as non-citizens and were given weeks to affirm if they were citizens so they could be added back to the voter rolls.

The governor pushed back on Tapper’s efforts to frame the effort as a “purging program,” saying that it’s “anything but a purging program.”

“It begins with someone identifying themselves as a non-citizen,” he noted. “Do you think that non-citizens, when they’ve [themselves] identified as a non-citizen should stay on the voter roll and therefore be in a position to potentially vote in a presidential election?”

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