(Daily Wire) The U.S. Department of Justice explicitly approved a Virginia law designed to prevent noncitizens from being added to voter rolls. Now the Biden-Harris DOJ is suing the state for enforcing it, The Daily Wire has exclusively learned.
The law has been in force since 2007 and was signed by then-governor Tim Kaine, who is now a Democrat senator. On October 25, 2006, Virginia’s then-Senior Assistant Attorney General J. Jasen Eige wrote to the federal DOJ, “I submit for your approval pursuant to the Voting Rights Act… changes to the Driver’s License Process in the Commonwealth of Virginia by requiring a declaration of citizenship before a customer is offered the opportunity to register to vote.”
In December, John Tanner, then-chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, replied, “The Attorney General does not interpose any objection to the specified change.” The letter noted that it did not preclude the possibility of litigation in the future.
Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin told The Daily Wire on Saturday, “We are upholding the Constitution and Virginia law signed 18 years ago by then-governor Tim Kaine. And we now know that the Virginia law was reviewed and expressly approved by the DOJ civil rights division. Now, after being applied for 18 years by both Democrat and Republican governors, with just 25 days before the presidential election, the Biden-Harris DOJ sues Virginia.”
“Ensuring Virginia’s voter rolls do not include non-citizens is constitutional, it’s the law in Virginia and it’s common sense,” he added. “Non-citizens shouldn’t be on the voter rolls.”
In September, Democrats threatened to shut down the federal government rather than pass a spending bill that included the SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship. The Biden-Harris administration explained that it “strongly opposes” the bill because “[it] is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections” and “[states] already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls.”
The administration then began blocking states from enforcing those existing laws. In addition to suing Virginia, it sued Alabama for a similar effort.
