Virginia wrongly removed nearly 3,400 voters from the state’s voter rolls

Virginia improperly removed nearly 3,400 voters from state rolls, election officials said Tuesday ahead of the statewide election.

The administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, had previously said as much approximately 270 voters had been accidentally removed from the rolls due to an error in the state’s computer system. The state admission on Friday That the problem was orders of magnitude bigger than previously revealed sparked outrage from voting rights groups and the state’s Democratic Party.

“The lack of transparency here is troubling,” said Aaron Mukerjee, voter protection director for the Democratic Party of Virginia, adding that previous assurances from state officials that the error was a minor problem made it “hard to believe” that the new figure was accurate.

The elections are Tuesday in Virginia projected as a throwand will decide control of the state’s closely divided legislature. It will also provide both national parties with insight into their electoral strengths and weaknesses heading into 2024.

Election integrity has become a key issue in Virginia, with conservative activists using next week’s election as a testing ground for a broader strategy to track voter fraud in the 2024 election.

The affected voters were people who had previously been convicted of crimes and had their voting rights restored after serving their sentences, according to the state’s Department of Elections. A software bug misclassified probation violations as new crimes that would automatically strip residents of their right to vote under Virginia. law.

The department has said all but about 100 people have had their rights restored.

Virginia is the only state that permanently disenfranchises voters convicted of a crime, and their rights can only be restored through individual petitions to the governor’s office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Brennan Center for Justice. Mr. Youngkin, who took office last year, had rescinded policies enacted by previous governors that automatically restored voting rights to residents who had completed their sentences.

Mr. Youngkin’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Lyn McDermid, Virginia secretary of administrationsaid the governor had done that the state’s inspector general asked to investigate the “causes and circumstances” of the purge of the electoral rolls.

The potential election impact is likely to be small among the more than six million Virginians registered to vote. Voters who have served their sentences for a crime are four times as likely to be registered as Democrats or unaffiliated, but Republicans in that group are also more likely to vote, according to a 2019 study by Ragnar Research Partners.

An analysis by the Marshall Project also showed this about 1 in 4 formerly incarcerated voters who had their rights restored had registered to vote in the 2020 elections in four key states.

But the timing of Virginia’s disclosure — about a week before Election Day — combined with earlier statements from state officials dismissive of the issue, drew widespread attention.

“While the administration says it has resolved the problem, the delays and ambiguity threaten to undermine confidence in next week’s subsequent legislative elections,” the editorial staff of The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press said. wrote Tuesday.