The Virginia Board of Elections has purged more than 38,000 names from its voter rolls just weeks before Election Day, despite serious concerns from local election administrators that many of those voters are still eligible to cast a ballot. The purge comes a few months after the board said it would use several databases to find voters who were now ineligible to vote, either because they had been convicted of a felony or moved out of state. But after the board sent an initial list of voters who would be purged to local election administrators, those administrators found what they said were hundreds of voters who shouldn’t be removed. On Oct. 3, the state Democratic Party filed paperwork seeking an injunction to halt the purge. But on Tuesday, the Board of Elections said it had already nixed 38,870 names from voter rolls after county registrars reviewed the initial lists. Another 11,138 eligible voters will remain active on the rolls after county registrars reviewed the state lists. And almost 7,300 will be designated “inactive,” meaning they must cast provisional ballots on Election Day, ballots that will only be counted after their eligibility is verified.
“This is a 14th Amendment issue. We have 131 local election officials here in Virginia, and the guidance they got from the state board was, quote, use your best judgement,” said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the Virginia Democratic Party. Coy said the fact that the Board of Elections’ legal adviser, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), is on the ballot this year as a candidate for governor raised red flags.
Several county registrars said they didn’t have the time necessary to ensure eligible voters inadvertently included on the state list weren’t denied their right to vote. Loudoun County Registrar Judy Brown said in an interview that she had to race to meet her local electoral board’s deadline.
“My main concern was the lack of time to be able to devote to the list to make sure we weren’t taking people off without first trying to find out if they were still here or if they had left,” Brown said. “I believe that kind of stuff deserves my attention.”
Full Article: Virginia election officials purging almost 40,000 voters