The commonwealth of Virginia has booted 5,556 self-reported non-citizens off the voter rolls since 2011, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) announced Monday.
Based on information gathered from three lawsuits, multiple record requests and reviews of voter history files across 133 Virginia jurisdictions, the group says that 1,852 non-citizens cast 7,474 votes before being booted from the rolls.
PILF alleged that state and local officials initially refused to turn over records.
“At the instruction of Governor McAuliffe’s political appointees, local election officials spent countless resources to prevent this information from spilling into the open,” PILF president and general counsel J. Christian Adams said in a statement. “Virginia hid critical information that would have improved election integrity while a political operative-turned-governor vetoed numerous proposals that would’ve prevented alien registration and voting. From NoVa to Norfolk and all urban and rural points in between, alien voters are casting ballots with practically no legal consequences in response.”
“In this election year, aliens must not cast illegal ballots, and if they do they must be prosecuted. Let’s pray that Gov. McAuliffe’s veto pen did not invite a close election tainted by fraud,” Adams added.
Despite allegations of a cover-up, Virginia’s Department of Elections has published a yearly report since 2014 on how many non-citizens were removed from the rolls the previous year. (The 2014 report did not provide a number, however.)
The state canceled 404 voters who declared themselves to be a non-citizen from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016, according to the most recent report. It canceled 693 the previous year, and 434 the year before that.
The number of non-citizens who have been booted make up a small percentage of the total 5,529,742 Virginians who were registered to vote in 2016, though statewide and local races have recently been decided by thin margins.
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