“No one in the Commonwealth should be celebrating on a day that legitimate voters have been denied their right to vote a normal ballot.”
Today, following the recent decision by the US Supreme Court on Governor Youngkin’s voter purge, Senator Aaron Rouse, Chair of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, released the following statement:
“As Chair of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, I have tried to get straight answers from this Administration. I questioned the validity of the Governor’s Executive Order to unilaterally shorten what a monthly reporting process is expressly set forth in the 2006 law he claims justifies this purge. I requested transparency as to how these new procedures were being implemented. But it took the US Department of Justice filing suit and a federal judge forcing the Youngkin Administration to disclose the names of those removed to confirm what we feared – that in fact eligible Virginia voters have been stripped from the rolls.
No one in the Commonwealth should be celebrating on a day that legitimate voters have been denied their right to vote a normal ballot. Thanks only to our Democratic trifecta passing same-day registration in 2020 – over the objections of Republicans – these voters will get to cast provisional ballots. The Committee and I will work to ensure that these disenfranchised voters are educated as to the procedures for casting a valid provisional ballot, that election officials are prepared to assist them, and that local registrars’ reviews of these provisional ballots occur expeditiously.”
For further details, please contact Ryan Jackson at (757) 632-1465 or [email protected].
