A federal judge temporarily blocked Alabama on Wednesday voter withdrawal program listed thousands of registered voters and accused them of illegally registering in the state.
The Department of Justiceartment sued Alabama has objected to the program, which aims to remove voters from the rolls, arguing that it is too close to the Nov. 5 election.
The office of Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, called the program a “strategic effort” to “remove citizens registered to vote” from the state’s voter rolls.
But a federal law known as the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from systematically removing people from the rolls of registered voters for 90 days after a federal election, known as the “quiet period” before Election Day.
Allen announced the purge of 3,251 registered voters in Alabama in August, 84 days before Election Day.
In addition, those 3,251 voters were sent to the General Prosecutor’s Office for criminal prosecution, and it has already been determined that some of those sent were unjustly accused.
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, who was nominated in 2020 by former President Donald Trump, ruled that the state violated the “quiet period” provision of the National Voter Registration Act and ordered Allen to end the voter removal program through the election.
“This year, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (1) extended the deadline to announce the purge program to begin eighty-four days before the 2024 General Election, (2) later admitting that thousands of US citizens are on his purge list. In addition, non-citizens who are not eligible to vote) and (3) in any event referred anyone on the purge list to the Alabama Attorney General for criminal investigation,” Manasco wrote in the court order.
“As part of that program, they were all reported to Alabama’s chief law enforcement agency for criminal investigation,” Manasco said, adding that “to my knowledge, nothing has been done to rescind that.”
Manasco ordered the state to contact all 3,251 people to let them know they are still eligible to vote because they are not violating any other laws that would prevent them from voting.
It’s among several examples of voter purges in Republican-led states ahead of this fall’s presidential elections.
Ministry of Justice too sued the state of Virginia Friday for a similar program authorized by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to order the state to restore voter registrations that have been removed from the rolls since Aug. 7. He also asked the judge to train local officials and poll workers to prevent confusion about eligible voters. accused of not being a citizen.
Youngkin signed an order on Aug. 7 to compare the Department of Motor Vehicles’ list of noncitizens with the list of registered voters on a daily basis.
Local registrars were then told to notify anyone selected to cancel their registration to confirm their citizenship within 14 days. If voters did not respond by that time, they would be removed from the registration rolls.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit said it had already established that legitimate voters were mistakenly purged from voter rolls.