A judicial official in the federal court mandates Alabama to undo a policy that eliminated over 3,000 individuals from its voter registry.
"For several decades, federal legislation has mandated that states conclude comprehensive deletions of ineligible individuals from voter records no later than 90 days prior to a federal voting event. This year, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen transgressed this deadline when he declared the initiation of a purge scheme, starting 84 days prior to the 2024 General Election," wrote U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco in a 5-page preliminary halt order.
Manasco, a judge appointed by ex-President Donald Trump, further stated that Allen confessed his purge program comprised thousands of United States citizens (aside from a lesser number of non-citizens, who are disallowed from voting), and he issued referrals for all the implicated individuals to the state's attorney general for potential legal scrutiny.
This ruling represents a significant triumph for the U.S. Department of Justice and numerous voters in the state who filed a lawsuit against Allen last month, accusing him of unlawfully expunging 3,251 names from the state's registration list. The verdict came as Republicans persist in making noncitizen voting a pressing issue ahead of the 2024 election, despite the illegality and rarity of such voting incidents in U.S. elections.
Manasco stipulated that the injunction terminates after the 2024 election.
CNN contacted Allen's office for comment.
An attorney representing various voters in the state who challenged the purge program described the August 13 announcement as "a victory for voters and for all Alabamians who value a fair and unbiased electoral process."
"Court evidence – displaying a 60% mistake rate in the state's list – emphasizes the significance of the National Voter Registration Act for shielding voters from late-breaking threats to their voting prerogatives," Michelle Kanter Cohen of the Fair Elections Center stated in a commentary.
Allen initiated the elimination of 3,251 individuals purportedly identified as noncitizens from the state's voter records on August 13, despite acknowledging the possibility that some of this group may have subsequently obtained U.S. citizenship and gained the right to vote.
The lawsuits argued that this action infringed upon the National Voter Registration Act, which lays out the principles governing most states' modifications to their lists of authorized voters. The federal law necessitates that states maintain a 90-day period of tranquility during which officials cannot "systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters."
Extensive studies performed by both liberal and conservative research institutions have uncovered merely scattered occurrences of noncitizens casting ballots in elections where they are disqualified. Nonpartisan election specialists affirm that such incidents are almost always detected when they occur and that they rarely constitute a widespread predicament affecting U.S. elections.
In a similar lawsuit initiated last week in Virginia, the Department of Justice accused state officials of breaching the NVRA "quiet period" by expelling voters marked as possible noncitizens.
Despite the continued debate about noncitizen voting in U.S. elections, political analysis reveals only minimal instances of this issue. Moreover, strict penalties exist for such behavior due to the significance of adhering to the principles outlined by the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits states from making mass removals of potential noncitizen voters within the 90-day period prior to an election.
