Report: 5500+ Noncitizens Discovered on Voter Rolls in Virginia

One Third of Noncitizens Found Voted Illegally

(ALEXANDRIA, VA.) – May 30, 2017: The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today released Alien Invasion II, a sequel to the original Alien Invasion alien voting report originally circulated in 2016.

After three lawsuits, scores of record requests, and reviews voter history files across 133 Virginia jurisdictions, the Public Interest Legal Foundation has uncovered the following:

Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for non-citizenship between 2011 and May 2017;

1,852 of those removed as noncitizens cast ballots;

A total of 7,474 illegal ballots were cast from the pool of removed noncitizens;

Some records of illegal voting date back to the 1980s before their respective removals;

Virginia election officials routinely fail to alert law enforcement about these illegal votes or registrations.

“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. “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.

In the absence of regular data-sharing arrangements between federal officials and the Commonwealth, the ability of election officials to identify aliens on the voter rolls is almost nonexistent. The most that happens in Virginia is that an alien on the voter rolls will sometimes tell the state DMV they are not a citizen. Without those leads, counties and municipalities must accept false claims of citizenship on their face.

Finding the 5,556 voters removed as noncitizens was not easy. As the 2017 Alien Invasion II details, only eight (8) locales in the Commonwealth originally complied with PILF’s records requests that informed the original Alien Invasion study released in 2016. Some officials disclosed to PILF investigators that political appointees loyal to Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) gave guidance that prohibited the disclosure of the alien voters in question, citing the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA). In October 2016, PILF was forced to sue the City of Manassas and Chesterfield County to dislodge information. After a federal judge predictably ruled that the DPPA did not permit election records to be concealed, jurisdictions began submitting documents as originally requested.

After jurisdictions across Virginia finally turned over their illegal voter lists, PILF partnered with the Virginia Voters Alliance to study the rates of participation among the aliens.

Public Interest Legal Foundation’s research efforts did not occur in a vacuum. Repeatedly, Governor McAuliffe thwarted legislative reforms that would improve the integrity of Virginia’s voter registration and voting systems–some of which were inspired by PILF’s 2016 report. The 2017 edition outlines some lowlights:

In 2015, McAuliffe appointees in the Virginia Board of Elections floated a proposal that would have made an attestation of citizenship portion of the voter registration form optional.

McAuliffe vetoed SB 1105, which would have required voter registrars to investigate possible system failures, should their lists of voters surpass local citizen voting age population figures.

McAuliffe vetoed SB 1581, which would have required voter registrars to verify incoming voter applications against state and federal databases.

McAuliffe vetoed SB2343, which would have given resources to voter registrars to identify voters concurrently registered in other jurisdictions.

McAuliffe vetoed SB 872, which would have incorporated voter identification functions into the absentee balloting system.

The 2016 edition previously found more than 1,000 registered voters removed for non-citizenship reasons. Of that dataset, nearly 200 ballots were cast during their respective periods on the rolls.

Access to Alien Invasion II: The Sequel to the Discovery and Cover-up of Non-citizen Registration and Voting in Virginia has been made available, here.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections.

###