Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for being noncitizens, and a new investigation suggests it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, partnering with the Virginia Voters Alliance, found that noncitizens in the Old Dominion voted 7,474 times between 2011 and May 2017.
“Virginia election officials routinely fail to alert law enforcement about these illegal votes or registrations,” PILF president and general counsel J. Christian Adams charged in a new report, “Alien Invasion.”
Edgardo Cortes, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections, discounted PILF’s concerns, saying the information on illegal voters was “readily available on our website.”
But the state site showed only 1,531 noncitizens being removed from Virginia’s voting rolls.
Adams said his group expended 100 hours rooting out illegal voters. He accused Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration of blocking election-integrity legislation.
McAuliffe this year vetoed SB 1581, which would have required local registrars to verify incoming voter applications against state and federal databases, including Social Security records.
The Democratic governor also vetoed SB 872, which would have applied voter-ID protocols to absentee balloting.
“The number of registered noncitizens in Virginia thus far identified by this investigation is just the tip of the iceberg,” PILF stated in its report.
According to 2016 U.S. Census estimates, some 474,000 voting-age noncitizens reside in Virginia. “Each of these individuals can make their way onto the voting rolls by simply checking the wrong box during a visit to the DMV. The true extent of the problem likely runs in the tens of thousands, if not more,” PILF asserted.
Last year, FAIR reported that America’s voter registration system is “susceptible to abuse by noncitizens.”
Reagan George, director of the nonpartisan Virginia Voters Alliance, said his group continues to scour – any may sue — counties where registered voters outnumber the voting-age population.
“The McAuliffe administration has done everything it could to drag this out. Trying to get a local Democratic prosecutor to act is next to impossible,” he said.
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