Judicial Watch: Virginia Tried to Pause Noncitizen Voter Removal Before Election

Perhaps my assessment that Virginia elections could be rigged with illegal voters was really true. And it seems that Virginia Democrats are terrified of losing such illegal voters ahead of the midterms.

It will be no surprise to PJ Media readers to find out that Virginia is among the states with a serious registered noncitizen voter issue. Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) recently admitted to around 6,600 registered noncitizen voters, though she subsequently refused to give the Trump administration data on these individuals. The federal estimate of noncitizen New Jersey voters is closer to 35,000. A new report indicates that Virginia has at least 6,000 registered non-citizen voters, and quite possibly as many as New Jersey.

NEW: @JudicialWatch just found that Virginia cancelled 6,531 declared non-citizen voter registrations. But Virginia entered into a settlement with leftist groups to pause the program to remove declared noncitizens from voting rolls for the 90-day period before federal elections! pic.twitter.com/xeXb8QrG88
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) July 31, 2026

Judicial Watch also issued a press release in which it explained that it had sent a request in June to the Virginia Department of Elections (DoE) to ask for data under the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA. The idea was to assess if Virginia had implemented any measures to clean voter rolls of deceased or illicit voters.

The Judicial Watch request sought data on registrants removed for any reason from the eligible voters list and individuals flagged as potential noncitizens by the DoE or Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. Judicial Watch also asked about reports on the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) system regarding voter deaths or other changes in eligibility problems like moving out of state. In response, the Virginia DoE did not provide any of the declared noncitizen registrations. Virginia has a system where the DMV flags individuals who voluntarily admitted they were noncitizens and runs this data against voter registration lists, resulting in a notice to the noncitizens to cancel their registration.

18 U.S.C. § 1015(f) — makes it a crime to knowingly make a false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote or vote in any federal, state, or local election. 18 U.S.C. § 611 — is the direct prohibition on aliens voting in any election for federal office

But in April 2026, Virginia under Gov. Abigail Spanberger made an agreement with leftist groups to halt the initiative to remove noncitizens from voting rolls for the 90-day period that leads up to federal elections. It is key to emphasize that these are only the registered noncitizen voters who willingly admitted to not having citizenship (and obviously not all aliens are that honest), and yet the Virginia government was still refusing to remove these admitted noncitizens from the rolls before an election. The only possible explanation is that the Democrat officials are happy to give the noncitizens a chance to vote, and since Virginia now functions as a sanctuary state, that's not entirely surprising.

Importantly, Virginia finally took action to remove the 6,531 noncitizen voters from the rolls after Judicial Watch made a big deal of it over the last few days. But it was a fight because of that agreement with the lefty groups. And again, we honestly have no idea how many noncitizens really are registered to vote in the state, because some of them might not have admitted to being noncitizens. Nor can we expect the Virginia Democrats to put forth extra effort to identify such aliens.

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