Nadra Wilson of Lynchburg, Virginia, was worried and confused when she received a letter in the mail from local election officials notifying her that her U.S. citizenship was in question.

The notice said she needed to affirm that she was a U.S. citizen within 14 days or her voter registration would be canceled. It was first sent to an old address and then forwarded. By the time Wilson received it in October, the deadline had already passed.

But Wilson was taken aback by the letter. “I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I’m a citizen,” Wilson said in an interview with NPR before showing her U.S. passport as proof.

Wilson, who works in healthcare, moved to Virginia nine years ago and first registered to vote there before the 2016 election.

The U.S. Supreme Court could rule as soon as Tuesday afternoon on an emergency request to block a lower court ruling ordering the state to restore Wilson and 1,600 other registered voters to Virginia’s rolls. The lower court found that a voter removal program removed them from the state’s registration list in violation of federal law. The state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has said the program enforces a 2006 state law and eliminates non-citizens who are not eligible to vote. Issued an August executive order require county election officials to remove suspected noncitizens flagged by the state on a daily basis.

But as the stories of Wilson and other voters show, the program has also wrongly ensnared American citizens who have the right to vote.

An emergency request to the United States Supreme Court

Civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia over the program earlier this month.

Virginia is asking the high court to intervene after U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled Friday that the state program violated federal law systematically removing voters too close to a federal election.

Under the National Voter Registration Act, during the 90 days before an election, states must suspend certain types of voter list maintenance programs that systematically remove voters to ensure that errors are not made too close to the election. The so-called quiet period began this year on Aug. 7, the same day Youngkin issued his executive order.

Giles, President Biden’s nominee, ordered Virginia to reinstate the 1,600 voters who were removed Wednesday. His order also said the state could still expel noncitizens “through individualized review.”

Youngkin criticized the ruling.

“This is a stunning ruling by a federal judge ordering Virginia to reinstate people who have identified themselves as noncitizens on the voter rolls,” he said. he told Fox News on Friday.

Wilson responded that Youngkin is “not right” in how she has characterized the program given that it has also ensnared American citizens like her. He described the state program as “very, very unfair.”

Over the weekend, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court’s ruling against Virginia. The state then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Because Virginia allows it in-person voter registration through election dayThere is still time for eligible voters to register and vote in the election, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.

However, some Virginia voters who were mistakenly removed may have lost the opportunity to request an absentee ballot.

The litigation in Virginia comes during a campaign season in which former President Donald Trump and Republican leaders have repeated Baseless conspiracy theories that non-citizens are willing to vote. in large numbers in these elections. Critics say it is an effort to sow distrust in the election and lay the groundwork for potential election challenges. Only US citizens can vote in federal and state elections. A limited number of localities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, such as school boards.

Trump has mischaracterized the Justice Department’s lawsuit by claiming that the agency aims to get “illegal voters” back on the Virginia rolls and “CHEAK” in the upcoming election. There is no evidence for the claim.

Virginia is among several Republican-led states that have announced new controversial initiatives in recent months that were intended to eliminate potential noncitizens but that critics said were too broad and have also affected eligible citizens.

A federal judge in Alabama earlier this month stopped that state’s program to deactivate the records of 3,251 people the state suspected might not be citizens. The Secretary of State’s office has so far acknowledged that at least 2,074 of those people were eligible voters, according to court documents. The judge, nominated by Trump, said in an Oct. 16 hearing that the state “has identified a handful, at least four, maybe up to ten, maybe more, noncitizens who were somehow on the voter rolls.” of Alabama.”

DMV errors

Another Virginia voter, Rina Shaw, 22, who said she was born in the state, had not realized her voter registration had been canceled until NPR asked her about her registration status and verified it online.

Shaw, who started voting in 2020, said he recently updated his voter registration with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles when he was getting his learner’s permit and found the form was “poorly designed.”

She probably didn’t check a box indicating she was a U.S. citizen, because she later received a letter from her county elections office notifying her that DMV information indicated she “may not be a U.S. citizen.” The notice asked him to affirm his citizenship, which he did, and then mailed the form.

Shaw acknowledged that he probably missed the 14-day deadline to respond, although he did not expect his registration to be canceled.

According to a spreadsheet of removed voters filed in court and obtained by NPR, it appears Shaw’s registration was canceled on October 20.

Shaw called it “outrageous” that the state was removing voters like her “so close to the election” and giving them so little time to correct the mistake. “It’s crazy, I can’t believe this happened,” Shaw said.

Wilson had also gone to the DMV to renew his driver’s license shortly before receiving his cancellation notice in the mail. She said she was later told she should have checked a box saying she was not a citizen, but she told NPR, “I don’t think I did that.”

Eric Olsen, Prince William County elections director, is familiar with stories about visits to the DMV that led to Virginia voters being mislabeled as potential noncitizens.

He DMV Driver’s License Application It has boxes at the top, above the title, for people to indicate whether they are citizens or not. Olsen said that “it just lends itself to people making mistakes or not seeing the information.”

Olsen said if the state flags someone as a possible noncitizen, county offices like his must send notices asking them to confirm their citizenship and then must automatically remove from the lists anyone who does not respond within 14 days.

In May, Olsen reviewed the records of the 162 people his office had removed from the rolls during the previous year under this program. He said that of the 43 people in that group who had previously voted, all had stated in previous registrations that they were American citizens, sometimes as many as “three, four or five times.”

In those cases, Olsen said, “we would assume that they most likely simply omitted this box on the form.”

Lawyers for state election officials denied in court papers that Virginians who left the citizenship box blank at the DMV were flagged for removal from voter rolls.

Only voters who were removed after August 7 are subject to the district court’s order to be reinstated on the rolls.

The citizenship status of the 1,600 voters is unknown at this time. There is no database of US citizens to compare with. Lawyers representing civil rights groups in the lawsuit have been trying to contact everyone on the list.

Anna Dorman, an attorney with the nonprofit Protect Democracy, which advocates for voting rights, said she has reached out to “numerous” citizens on the list of 1,600 voters and said there are signs that “many of these people are citizens who have been illegally purged under this program.”

Dorman and his colleagues have spoken to other American citizens who visited the DMV just before receiving cancellation notices from election officials.

Carolina Díaz Tavera, a naturalized U.S. citizen whose voter registration was canceled but who does not appear on the list of purged voters after Aug. 7, filed a statement in the lawsuit saying she is concerned that the state removed her from the voter rolls. voters due to outdated data. DMV records since you were a legal resident when you obtained your driver’s license.

The Virginia Department of Elections worked with the DMV over the summer to introduce people who had previously filed non-citizenship documents through a federal database, SAVEand flagged people who appeared to be noncitizens, according to court documents.

Dorman said most people he was able to contact did not know they had been removed from the voter rolls. “Either they never received the flyer from the government or they received it and thought it was a scam,” Dorman said.

As for Nadra Wilson, she arranged to leave work early so she could go to her county board of elections and fix her voter registration.

“I’m grateful we were able to fix it,” Wilson said.

Wilson decided to vote early and was able to cast her ballot on Tuesday during her lunch break.

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