Updated October 16, 2024 at 17:34 PM ET
A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked Alabama’s voter removal program in one of the major legal fights over voter purges in Republican-led states ahead of this fall’s Election Day.
The court ruling comes after the Justice Department and civil rights groups represented by the Campaign Legal Center challenged what the office of Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, has called “strategic efforts” to “remove noncitizens registered to vote” from the state’s voter rolls.
A federal law known as the National Voter Registration Act bans Alabama and other states from systematically removing people from their lists of registered voters within 90 days of a federal election, also known as the “quiet period” before Election Day.
In August, 84 days before Election Day, Allen announced a process for purging 3,251 registered Alabama voters who had been issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security. Non-U.S. citizens are not allowed to vote in federal and state elections. But among those put on the path to removal, Allen acknowledged, are U.S. citizens who were naturalized and are eligible to vote.
In the decision, U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, who was nominated by former President Donald Trump, ruled that the state violated the NVRA’s “quiet period” provision and ordered Allen to put the voter removal program on pause through Nov. 5.
“This year, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (1) blew the deadline when he announced a purge program to begin eighty-four days before the 2024 General Election, (2) later admitted that his purge list included thousands of United States citizens (in addition to far fewer noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote), and (3) in any event, referred everyone on the purge list to the Alabama Attorney General for criminal investigation,” Manasco wrote in the court order.
The court also directed Allen’s office to issue guidance to county election officials on restoring registered voters to the state’s rolls, announce the court’s order on the secretary of state’s website and inform the state’s attorney general that they had inaccurately referred a number of Alabamians to be investigated.
“I will comply with the order of the federal court,” Allen said in a statement.
Alabama’s challengers are calling the ruling a victory for voting rights.
“This action sends a clear message that the Justice Department will work to ensure that the rights of eligible voters are protected,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
“No U.S. citizen should be afraid to vote, and we are proud to have defended Alabamians ahead of the upcoming election,” said Kate Huddleston, the Campaign Legal Center’s senior legal counsel. “Today’s court decision helps protect Alabama citizens’ freedom to register and vote without concerns about government interference or intimidation.”
Similar lawsuits have been filed in Virginia by the Justice Department, as well as the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights. They are challenging an August executive order by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin that calls for “daily updates” to the state’s voter list in order to remove “individuals who are unable to verify that they are citizens” to Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
The timing of the voter removals under the order violated the NVRA’s “quiet period” restriction, Virginia’s challengers argue. In court filings, they also point out that the DMV data used to determine a voter’s U.S. citizenship status can be wrong or out of date.
Youngkin, in a statement, called the DOJ lawsuit “a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections” in Virginia.
That was echoed by Trump, who has been pushing baseless allegations of widespread noncitizen voting while campaigning for a second term. Providing no evidence, Trump said in a post on his social media platform that the Justice Department’s legal challenge is one of “the Greatest Examples of DOJ Weaponization” that was done to “CHEAT on the Election” by putting “Illegal Voters” back on Virginia’s voter rolls.
Another potential legal fight over recent voter purges is brewing in Ohio. Voting rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter dated Oct. 3 to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, pointing to mass voter removals in some of the state’s counties that they argue did not follow NVRA requirements. The groups said they’re prepared to go to court if changes are not made within 20 days.
Copyright 2024 NPR
