Fox News repeatedly misled viewers about Virginia’s last-minute voter purge

Fox figures are falsely claiming the Biden administration is “pushing for noncitizens to vote in the 2024 election”

In separate segments, Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn and network contributor Jonathan Turley both falsely suggested that the Biden administration is fighting against Virginia’s purge of 1,600 voters to push for noncitizens to vote. In reality the administration and civil rights groups sued to protect Virginia citizens who are legally allowed to vote — not to allow noncitizens to cast ballots — and objected to the state’s move to purge voter rolls less than 90 days before an election, which violates federal law. 

Since August 7, state officials have removed 1,600 Virginia voters who were supposedly suspected to be noncitizens from the voter rolls. However, subsequent reporting found “the program has also erroneously ensnared U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote.” From NPR:

Civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice had sued Virginia over the program earlier this month. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled Friday the state program violated federal law by systematically removing voters too close to a federal election.

Under the National Voter Registration Act, during the 90 days before an election, states must pause certain kinds of voter list maintenance programs that systematically remove voters to ensure mistakes aren't made too close to the election.

On October 30, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that Virginia did not have to restore those 1,600 people to the voter rolls before Election Day.

Discussing the previous lower-court decision on October 29, Urbahn did not acknowledge the missed 90-day time frame or the citizens removed from the rolls. Instead, Urbahn suggested “the Biden administration [is] pushing for noncitizens to vote in the 2024 election” and called the lawsuit to prevent citizens from being purged “bizarre” and “a bad look for DOJ,” adding that “it could have been to send a message.”

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Citation From the October, 29, 2024, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom

On The Story with Martha MacCallum, Turley claimed that the Biden administration was actively suing specifically to allow noncitizens to vote: “You have people saying I'm not a citizen and I want to vote and we're saying we can't do that, and now the Biden-Harris administration is saying you will do that with the help of these federal courts.”

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Citation From the October 29, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Story with Martha MacCallum