Courts Shut Down Non-Citizen Voter Fear Mongering Efforts Across the Country

For the last several months, Republicans have been perpetuating the false narrative that non-citizens are illegally voting en-masse on behalf of Democrats this cycle, as Donald Trump and his supporters manufacture voter fraud hysteria that they can point to if they lose next week.

Republican state officials across the country have bolstered this effort by announcing various voter roll purge programs and legal challenges to remove supposed non-citizens from the rolls in recent weeks and months — ominously close to the election. 

One by one, however, the courts have swiftly shut down these programs and dismissed the lawsuits alleging issues with voter rolls. The across-the-board dismissals have only reinforced the idea that the GOP non-citizen voting myths have only ever been a messaging campaign meant for an audience of one. 

“Whenever somebody is promoting the claim that there are non-citizens voting in our elections, it’s not based on facts,” Andrew Garber, counsel within the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, told TPM. “And it seems to be driving towards a different narrative, which is election denial, which is trying to give the impression that there are problems so that it can be used to challenge election results they don’t like.”

Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked GOP Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s recent efforts to purge supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls just before the election. In August, Youngkin signed Executive Order 35, removing more than 6,000 alleged non-citizens from the voter rolls, and also announcing the state’s new program designed to purge supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls. Voting rights activists filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this month arguing that the program directly violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and has the potential to disenfranchise eligible voters. 

U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles agreed with the plaintiffs last week, saying in her order that the program does indeed violate the NVRA’s 90-day quiet period, which prohibits voter registration cancellation or any systematic list maintenance program being implemented within 90 days of an election. 

A federal appeals court on Sunday upheld the judge’s ruling, refusing to reinstate the program and restoring the voter registrations of those who were purged. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares wrote on X on Sunday that “Virginia will be filing an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court immediately.” State officials on Monday asked the high court to intervene.

Garber described the appeal too as simply a “messaging effort.”

“I think a lot of it is the messaging effort, and a lot of it is trying to have something to point back to if they don’t like election results,” he said. 

Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from the Republican National Committee seeking access to Michigan’s voter rolls in order to remove supposedly ineligible voters. The lawsuit claimed that the state, in violation of the NVRA, was not maintaining accurate voter rolls. U.S. District Court Judge Jane M. Beckering, however, ruled that the case lacked standing. 

And last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked Alabama’s Secretary of State Wes Allen’s (R) voter purge program, which was designed to remove supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of Alabama and Allen, arguing that the program violated the NVRA. U.S. District Court Judge Anna Manasco ruled in September that the program, like the one in Virginia, also violated the NVRA 90-day quiet period. 

The most glaring issue with these non-citizen voting efforts is the timing. If non-citizen voting and voter list maintenance is as big of an issue as Republicans claim — which experts have explained time and time again that it is not — why did Republicans wait so long to address it? The answer, of course, is that there is no real issue with widespread non-citizens voting or voter list maintenance, David Becker, the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research told TPM. These various efforts are merely attempts to sow seeds of distrust in the election system in case Trump loses next month, he said. 

“There’s good reason for suspicion as to why these cases were filed when they were filed,” Becker said, “and that’s knowing that they would almost certainly lose. And that’s because it’s being done more to fuel false claims about an election being stolen that presumably they expect their candidate to lose.” 

Justin Levitt, an election law scholar and professor at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, also pointed out that the fact that the courts have so quickly shut down these programs and dismissed lawsuits challenging voter rolls is simply evidence that the justice system is working as it should. 

“This is exactly what you’d expect, that programs that are clearly unlawful that we’re known to be clearly unlawful are getting shut down and shut down quickly,” he said. “Despite the efforts of a few to sow confusion and disorder, the most important thing for the public to know, the most important thing for the voters to know is that the attempts to create chaos aren’t working.”