A federal judge temporarily blocked Alabama’s non-citizen voter removal effort Wednesday in response to the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) last month.
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco preliminarily enjoined the program after a hearing held in federal court in Birmingham.
“For decades, federal law has given states a hard deadline to complete systematic purges of ineligible persons from voter rolls: no later than ninety days before a federal election,” the order said. “This year, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (1) blew the deadline when he announced a purge program to begin eighty-four days before the 2024 General Election, (2) later admitted that his purge list included thousands of United States citizens (in addition to far fewer noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote), and (3) in any event, referred everyone on the purge list to the Alabama Attorney General for criminal investigation.”
RELATED: Non-citizens to be purged from Alabama voter rolls, Secretary of State Wes Allen announces
Alabama Sec. of State Wes Allen announced in August that he had identified 3,251 individuals who are registered to vote in Alabama who have been issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security. He then instructed the Boards of Registrars in all 67 counties to immediately inactivate and initiate steps necessary to remove all individuals who are not United States Citizens.
The DOJ is claiming the voter roll purge violates the National Voter Registration Act because it was done too close to election day. The federal law requires states to observe a 90-day quiet period during which officials cannot “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
“I was elected Secretary of State by the people of Alabama, and it is my Constitutional duty to ensure that only American citizens vote in our elections,” Allen said in response to the lawsuit. “As to the question regarding the Department of Justice’s lawsuit, this office does not comment on pending litigation where the Secretary of State is a named defendant.”
The decision comes less than a week after the Department of Justice filed a similar suit in Virginia.
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
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