This story was reported and written by VPM News.
A week before the start of Virginia’s early voting period, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order directing state election officials to work and share data with the federal government to remove ineligible people from voter rolls.
Youngkin’s new directive calls for the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) and its commissioner to work with the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Election Assistance Commission for the effort.
The move, met with scrutiny from critics over potential accuracy issues, comes after President Donald Trump allowed Homeland Security’s citizenship check tool to search using Social Security numbers.
It also comes amid a lawsuit that claims the commonwealth mistakenly removed eligible voters under a 2024 executive order from Youngkin. That EO aimed to purge non-citizens from the rolls.
“As the threat landscape continues to evolve, election security must advance accordingly,” Youngkin wrote in his Sept. 12 order. “These actions are necessary to stay ahead of emerging risks, foster resilience across all localities, and ensure that all Virginians can continue to rely on free, fair, and secure elections.”
These aren’t the only instances of Youngkin’s administration purging voters. As VPM News first reported in 2023, 3,400 voters were incorrectly marked ineligible during the first general election after Virginia’s electoral maps were redistricted — following a contentious yearslong process.
The new executive order states that Virginia’s voter rolls are accurate through “daily cross-checks with the Department of Motor Vehicles” and other sources like death records as outlined in Youngkin’s Executive Order 35.
That order led to a federal lawsuit from a coalition of organizations — and one from the Department of Justice that was dropped after Trump took office — over multiple claims, including violations of the National Voter Registration Act after it came 90 days before the 2024 presidential election.
Under the new directive, Virginia will expand its use of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to identify non-citizens on the state’s voter list.
Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals will continue to use the SAVE database “using bulk upload functionality in accordance with state law, a requirement first implemented by my administration,” Youngkin wrote.
Ryan Snow, counsel with the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, is one of the lawyers working on the ongoing legal challenge against Youngkin’s 2024 executive order.
Snow said the group is still reviewing Youngkin’s latest order, but he voiced his concerns over its call to use the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database.
Under changes from the Trump administration, officials can use social security numbers to verify citizenships of Americans. Like Virginia, other Republican-led states are expanding their uses of SAVE. This includes Ohio, which reported it used SAVE and found thousands of dead people on its rolls.
There were existing concerns with SAVE’s use of DHS citizenship records for verification for Snow, because he said many people don’t have updated DHS records.
“But now, we have the ability to use Social Security numbers, which both means that much larger numbers of voters can be run through the SAVE program, but also that data is going to be even less accurate,” Snow told VPM News.
This ties back to an issue caused by Youngkin’s executive order last year, Snow said. That directive called for driver’s license records to be reviewed. This impacted non-citizens who became naturalized after getting licenses, Snow told VPM News.
“Their driver's license is still valid, and there's no requirement that they update it, and this can cost money,” he said. “So, there are a lot of those people who are naturalized citizens who would be erroneously identified as non-citizens, and now this risk extends to social security numbers.”
Snow said he didn’t have a specific total of eligible voters who were removed from the state’s rolls after Youngkin’s 2024 order, but said the case is ongoing after a judge rejected efforts to throw out the legal challenge.
“We are hoping that we can move forward and prior to this November's election, we can get an updated list of those who've been removed,” he said.
Under Youngkin’s order, the elections commissioner will have to present an update to Virginia’s voting system certification standards to the State Board of Elections that includes the US Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0.
If the proposal is adopted, the commissioner will make sure all new voting systems submitted are tested against the standards.
Beals will also have to give feedback to the US Election Assistance Commission on its efforts to evaluate state voter registration systems and election night reporting modules through the Election Supporting Technology Evaluation Program.
Youngkin also ordered an election preparedness tabletop exercise involving multiple state agencies before early voting starts Friday to evaluate plans and prepare for the state elections.
At a Richmond Electoral Board meeting Wednesday, General Registrar David Levine said his office has yet to receive official guidance from the state on any steps local election administrators should take.
Levine said the order appears to be a response to the federal government to get access to voter rolls that’s happening in other states.
Richmond Electoral Board Vice Chair Katherine Maxwell, a Republican, said she had “preliminary concerns” about what it could require election officials to share with federal agencies “without a statutory basis.”
The Nov. 4 general election includes races for governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor and all 100 House of Delegates seats.