Dennis Henson has been a registered voter his entire adult life.
So he wasn’t expecting the letter, dated Aug. 28, that told him his voter registration would expire because he had been identified as a noncitizen.
Henson, of Lynchburg, thinks he accidentally forgot to mark his citizenship status on the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles form when he renewed his driver’s license in July.
“Evidently, I missed a box,” Henson told a Cardinal News reporter on Friday while sitting on the steps of his Hill City house, taking a break from painting and other home improvement work.
Failing to check that citizenship box, or identifying as a noncitizen, triggers a process in which the DMV notifies the Department of Elections, which then notifies the local registrar’s office, which then sends a warning letter to the resident to tell them their registration is about to be canceled. The resident is given 14 days to respond.
Henson wanted to vote on Election Day. He has a special red shirt that he wears to the polls to show his support for the GOP. He said, “I’m a Republican 100%, Donald Trump.”
So, he mailed back a response within the required 14 days. He suspects the postal service didn’t get it to the Lynchburg Registrar’s Office in time because he received another notice, dated Sept. 19, that said his voter registration had been canceled.
On Oct. 14, Henson went to the registrar’s office on Kemper Street in person and filled out the paperwork to re-register to vote.
“Everything’s been straightened out,” he said.
Since Aug. 7, a dozen voters were removed from the voter rolls in Lynchburg after they, like Henson, were identified by the DMV as noncitizens.
Lawrence Otey, a longtime voter who lives in Roanoke, accidentally checked the “non-U.S. citizen” box when renewing his driver’s license. He was then notified that he was removed from the rolls.
Otey’s brick house sits on a steep hill in a friendly neighborhood, the type of place where you’d answer the door when a stranger knocks. He came outside in a Virginia Tech crewneck, noting how lucky we got with the weather — over 70 degrees in late October, two weeks from election day.
“I’ve been voting since Jimmy Carter,” Otey said. He laughed about his mistake — “Don’t get old,” he said. Otey went to the DMV with various forms of identification to sort out the issue, so he was able to vote early.
Like Henson in Lynchburg, Otey was not alone in finding out he’d been declared a noncitizen. In Roanoke, 32 voters were removed from the rolls, while 15 were removed in Roanoke County. Four were removed in Danville and one was removed in Bristol.
Those whose registration had been recently canceled after they were bureaucratically declared a “noncitizen” are getting a reprieve, thanks to a recent court ruling.
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Virginia Department of Elections to reinstate roughly 1,600 voters who were removed from the rolls after they were “declared noncitizen” following an Aug. 7 executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The ruling, made by Judge Patricia Giles in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, said that Youngkin and the Department of Elections must halt the systematic removal of voters from the rolls. The Department of Elections must also reinstate those who were removed after the executive order was issued, within five days of the ruling. It is also required to send written notification to each voter that was removed since Aug. 7 that their voter registration has been restored.
The Department of Elections is allowed to continue to remove voters from the rolls at the request of the registrant, by reason of criminal conviction or mental incapacity, or due to death of a registrant, according to the ruling.
The lawsuit against Youngkin’s executive order
Voter rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice filed lawsuits against the commonwealth and the Department of Elections on Oct. 11 that sought to halt Youngkin’s executive order.
That prompted a political firestorm during an already fraught election cycle with claims of “interference” leveled against the DOJ by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and other members of the GOP.
Data from the DMV was used to remove people who identified as noncitizens from the voter rolls regularly before Youngkin’s executive order. Seven people were removed from the rolls in Lynchburg after they were declared noncitizens in 2024, before the August executive order.
The lawsuit argued that Youngkin’s executive order violated a provision in the National Voter Registration Act that requires states to complete systematic programs that remove names of ineligible voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That section of the law, known as the Quiet Period Provision, applies to programs that aim to remove people from voter registration lists based on their perceived failure to meet initial eligibility requirements, such as citizenship, at the time of registration, according to a statement by the DOJ.
Youngkin’s executive order, handed down exactly 90 days before the Nov. 5 election, required that the Department of Elections verify daily the legal presence and identity of voters using DMV data.
Voting rights groups have argued that the use of DMV data could result in the erroneous removal of U.S. citizens from the voter rolls. And, in a court filing, they outlined at least three individual cases where that occurred following the executive order.
In a statement on Friday, Youngkin said that the people removed from the rolls had “self-identified” as noncitizens.
Reactions to the ruling
On Friday afternoon, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals, Attorney General Jason Miyares and other state officials appealed Giles’ ruling to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Miyares called the lawsuit “bullying” and “weaponization” of the DOJ against the commonwealth in a statement before the appeal was filed.
“More concerning is the open practice by the Biden-Harris administration to weaponize the legal system against the enemies of so-called progress. That is the definition of lawfare,” he said.
Youngkin argued that his executive order followed a state law that was signed nearly two decades ago.
“This is a Virginia law passed in 2006, signed by then-Governor Tim Kaine, that mandates certain procedures to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, with safeguards in place to affirm citizenship before removal — and the ultimate failsafe of same-day registration for U.S. citizens to cast a provisional ballot,” Youngkin said in a statement. “This law has been applied in every Presidential election by Republicans and Democrats since enacted 18 years ago.”
Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, a Democrat, agreed with the Friday ruling that Youngkin’s executive order violated established law.
“This purge was a direct attempt to disenfranchise eligible U.S. citizens, and I commend the courts for intervening,” he said in a statement. “Voting is sacred and our ancestors bled for our right to it. It’s unconscionable to see our own governor and attorney general make a concerted effort to undermine that right.”
