Glenn Youngkin slams DOJ for suing Virginia over removing non-citizens from voter rolls—state has been doing so per election law since 2006

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin slammed the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) while he was on with Jake Tapper Monday after the DOJ sued the state over implementing what the administration called a "systemic" removal of non-citizen voters too close to the election. However, the Virginia law requiring their continual removal has been around since 2006. 

Tapper told Youngkin that Virginia was allegedly "purging voters that were flagged as potential non-citizens" within 90 days of the election. 

Youngkin responded, that the program has been a law on the books since 2006 to remove people from voter rolls who "self-identify as a non-citizen." He reiterated that the process had been in place since 2006 and that Democratic governors have previously taken ineligible voters off the rolls within the 90 period before an election. 

"Do you think that non-citizens, when they've self-identified as a non-citizen, should stay on the voter roll and therefore be in a position to potentially vote in a presidential election? They actually tick a box that says I am a non-citizen, or they do not answer the question, that they are a citizen and therefore they self-identify, that they are not a citizen in the United States of America. And this is why this is so out of bounds in my mind from the Justice Department," Youngkin said.

He added, "It's stunning that they filed this suit 25 days before a presidential election, when in fact, this has been going on in accordance with our Constitution, the federal Constitution and state law since 2006."

Last week, the DOJ sued the state of Virginia for implementing the practice of daily updates to the voter rolls, where new voters are added and non-citizens as well as deceased people are taken off. The DOJ cited Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which says a state cannot "later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, [complete] any program" which "systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters."

According to section Virginia code, § 24.2-404, the Department of Elections keeps a continuous record-keeping system to maintain voter lists for "all voters registered in the Commonwealth" of Virginia, and there is a required annual review that has to be done since June 30, 2006.

In order to carry out the continuously updated list of the registered voters in Virginia, the elections department is required to "delete from the record of registered voters the name of any voter who ... is known not to be a United States citizen by reason of reports from the Department of Motor Vehicles pursuant to § 24.2-410.1 or from the Department of Elections based on information received from the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program," the law adds, "Such action shall be taken no later than 30 days after notification from the Department."

In other words, when any person who is a non-citizen self-identifies as such when they go to the DMV to register to vote, the state of Virginia is required by law to remove them from the rolls within 30 days. Leading up to the 2020 election, this same method was used, and "from September 1, 2019 – August 31, 2020, 802 voters were cancelled after declaring themselves 'non-citizen' within the DMV process," per a previous annual report  This would fall within the 90-day window of the 2020 election.