Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an Executive Order Friday aimed at enhancing election security in Virginia.
Executive Order 53 implements steps voter roll maintenance, including modernizing and tightening voting system standards that foster cooperation between state and federal agencies, according to Youngkin’s office.
“Free and fair elections are the bedrock of our democracy,” Youngkin said in a statement. “That’s why it is so important that we do everything we can to make our elections as secure as possible, ensuring that our lists are accurate and our systems are reliable. The Executive Order I am issuing today builds upon our previous work to make Virginia’s election security the best in the nation. Virginia has paper ballots, counting machines, and not voting machines, no internet connections, along with extensive procedures to remove ineligible individuals from the voter rolls.”
Through the order, the Virginia Commissioner and Department of Elections have been directed to strengthen election security by coordinating with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to ensure data is shared securely and ineligible voters are removed from voter rolls.
The order requires use of DHS’s SAVE database to identify non-citizens on the voter rolls. The order also requires the adoption of updated federal voting system guidelines into Virginia’s certification standards that are stricter than federal requirements.
The Virginia Fusion Center and Department of Emergency Management are mandated to conduct an election preparedness exercise statewide before early voting begins on Sept. 19 to test plans and coordination between agencies.
The order builds on Youngkin’s previous orders to strengthen the state’s election system, which established a multi-agency data sharing protocol and increased standards for voter roll maintenance, while broadening election security to ballot security procedures and rigorous testing of counting machines.
The order comes just one week before early voting is set to begin in the state’s 2025 election.
The SAVE program has received pushback from some, including the Brennan Center, as potentially overreaching.
“DHS has allowed local election officials to search for hundreds of thousands of voters simultaneously. This increases the risks that state officials will carry out erroneous voter purges and disenfranchise eligible voters,” the group wrote.
