We have updated our previous analysis (see March 2024, July 2024, Sept 2024, Oct 2024, Nov 2024, Dec 2024, March 2025, August 2025, and Jan 2026 posts) with the latest information from the VA Department of Elections data.
Abstract:
Using the data provided by the VA Department of Elections (ELECT), we have identified at least 8,566 unique registrations that were self-identified as “Declared Non-Citizen” and removed by ELECT from the voter rolls since May of 2023. Of those 8,566 removals there were 1,756 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 6,111 ballots associated with non-citizens cast and identified since Feb of 2019. There were an additional ten non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data, that were not contained in the Voter History data. The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 6,121 by 1,766 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.
After our initial March 2024 post on this topic, we submitted all of the relevant information that we had at the time to the VA AG’s office. We did not hear any response or update on the matter. We subsequently sent our July results as well to the same contact at the AG’s office, but again had no response. There was no action taken by the AG’s office on these cases that we are aware of.
The Arlington County VA Electoral Board undertook their own investigation into this matter after our previous results were posted, and they (as of Sept 10 2024) voted 3-0 to send the information to the AG’s office as well. The Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney also is reported to have an ongoing investigation into the matter. Similar efforts are underway in multiple other counties, including Loudoun and Fairfax counties, to name a few.
In October 2024 the League of Women Voters along with the Biden DOJ sued VA over this issue and attempted to get an injunction to place approximately 1,600 of these removed registrations back on the Voter Roll. After two lower courts granted the injunction, it was stayed by the US Supreme Court. It is EPEC’s opinion that the State of VA was correctly applying the law in this matter under Youngkin’s administration and AG Miyares, as I detailed in an X.com post on Oct 12. That lawsuit was dropped after Jay Jones was elected to the AG’s office.
The new AG (Jones) issued an advisory opinion to the department of elections that effectively adopts the position of the challengers in the Biden DOJ / LWV lawsuit. A copy of that opinion is linked below.
This letter was then followed by a Guidance from ELECT to registrars instructing them not to remove any voters within the 90 day windows around any federal election, including primaries. Beginning May 6th 2026, ELECT will no longer be populating non-citizen data into the “hoppers” that are used to notify registrars of tasks that require their action. ELECT has instructed the registrars to change the categorization of those existing flagged items in the hopper within the window from “notify voter” to “needs research”. This guidance document is also linked below.
Because of this, we expect that the number of records of Monthly Update Service (MUS) data self-identified non-citizens observed in the MUS will be significantly impacted. As expected we saw an order of magnitude difference as per the data we received on June 1, 2026 covering the May time-period.
Background:
As part of its responsibilities under law, the VA Department of Elections is required to identify and remove invalid or out of date registration records from the voter rolls. One situation for removal is when a registrant has been determined (via self identification) to be a non-citizen. It is required by the VA Constitution that only citizens are allowed to vote in VA elections.
“In elections by the people, the qualifications of voters shall be as follows: Each voter shall be a citizen of the United States, shall be eighteen years of age, shall fulfill the residence requirements set forth in this section, and shall be registered to vote pursuant to this article. …” VA Constitution, Article II, Section 1. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article2/section1/
Additionally, according to VA Code Section 24.2-1004, the act of knowingly casting a ballot by someone who is not eligible to vote is a Class 6 felony.
“A. Any person who wrongfully deposits a ballot in the ballot container or casts a vote on any voting equipment, is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.”
“B. Any person who intentionally (i) votes more than once in the same election, whether those votes are cast in Virginia or in Virginia and any other state or territory of the United States, (ii) procures, assists, or induces another to vote more than once in the same election, whether those votes are cast in Virginia or in Virginia and any other state or territory of the United States, (iii) votes knowing that he is not qualified to vote where and when the vote is to be given, or (iv) procures, assists, or induces another to vote knowing that such person is not qualified to vote where and when the vote is to be given is guilty of a Class 6 felony.” https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title24.2/chapter10/section24.2-1004/
ELECT makes available for purchase by qualifying parties various data sets, including the registered voter list (RVL) and the voter history list information file (VHL). Additionally, ELECT makes available a Monthly Update Service (MUS) subscription that is published at the beginning of each month and contains (almost) all of the Voter List changes and transactions for the previous period.
In the MUS data there is an “NVRAReasonCode” field that is associated with each transaction that gives the reason for the update or change in the voter record. This is in accordance with the disclosure and transparency requirements in the NVRA. One of the possible reason codes given for records that are removed is “Declared Non-Citizen.”
EPEC has been consistently purchasing and archiving all of these official records as part of our ongoing work to document and educate the public as to the ongoing operations of our elections. (If you are interested in supporting this work, please head on over to our donation page, or to our give-send-go campaign to make a tax-deductible donation.)
EPEC looked at the number of records associated with unique voter identification numbers that had been identified for removal from the voter record due to non-citizenship status, per the entries in the MUS, and correlated those results with our accumulated voter history list information in order to determine how many non-citizen registrations had corresponding records of ballots cast in previous elections. We only considered those records that are currently in a non-active state as of the latest MUS transaction log, since some determinations of non-citizenship status in the historical MUS transaction log might have been due to error and subsequently corrected and reinstated to active status. That is, and we emphasize here, we are not considering those records that had a “Declared Non-Citizen” disqualification, but were then subsequently reinstated and reactivated by ELECT.
Note that while EPEC has periodically purchased full copies of the Voter History List for our archives, there is a known issue with the way ELECT handles removals from the voter record that can cause sampling issues depending on the time the VHL file is purchased. The records of some legitimately cast ballots can be missing from the VHL due to this issue. Namely, when ELECT removes a voter from the voter list, they also remove all instances of that voter ID from voter history information and other data files provided to qualified organizations. (In my opinion, that process eliminates important voting information and thus is not a good way to manage the data, but that is the way it is done). In light of that, EPEC also used its archived versions of the Daily Absentee List (DAL) for recent elections in order to attempt to find records of votes cast that might otherwise be missing from, or had been eliminated from, the VHL.
Results:
There were 8,566 unique voter records marked for removal with the reason of “Declared Non-Citizen” and not subsequently reinstated in the accumulated MUS record that EPEC began collecting in mid-2023. Of those 8,566 there were 1,756 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 6,111 associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019. Figure 1 below shows the distribution of non-citizen voters in the cumulative MUS file history. The blue trace represent the total identified and CANCELED non-citizen registrations, and the yellow trace represents the number of those records that also had corresponding records (at least 1) in the accumulated voter history data.
Note that the data contained in the MUS updates often covers more than a single month’s period. In other words, the individual MUS files are oversampled. Subsequent MUS files can therefore also have repeated entries from previous versions, as their data may overlap. Our analysis used the first unique entry for a given voter ID marked as “Declared Non-Citizen” in the cumulative MUS record, that had not been subsequently reinstated, in order to build Figure 1. This data oversampling in the MUS may help explain the relative spike in the first (May 2023) bin compared to subsequent months.
As VHL information can be incomplete depending on the time the VHL data was purchased in relation to the time that registrants were removed from voter records, EPEC also checked these non-citizen removals against the archived history of Daily Absentee List (DAL) files that EPEC has accumulated. There were an additional ten non-citizen registrations and ballots as per the Daily Absentee List (DAL) data that were not contained in the Voter History data. The total number of identified non-citizen ballots cast is therefore 6,121 by 1,766 registrants when combining unique VHL and DAL identifications.
These identifications represent only the individuals who declared themselves as non-citizen status through official interactions with ELECT, DMV, or other agencies. Each removed registrant was then contacted by the registrar to confirm their non-citizen status prior to removal, as is the current policy. (Again … we are only considering those records that we’re flagged as “Declared Non-Citizen”, removed and never reinstated.)
The distribution of identified unique voter ID’s for the 1,756 identified non-citizen voters per VA locality is given below in Table 1. It should be noted that each ballot record has a specific locality associated with it stating where the ballot was cast, whereas unique individuals might move between localities over time. The assignment of unique identified individuals to each locality in table 1 is therefore based on the locality listed in the specific MUS “Declared Non-Citizen” record for that individual, while the assignment of ballot cast to Localities is based on the individual VHL/DAL records. A person could have lived and voted multiple times in one county, then moved to another county and voted again before finally being determined as a non-citizen. The same person would have generated multiple VHL/DAL records for each ballot cast, and associated with potentially different localities. This should be kept in mind when attempting to interpret Table 1.
| LOCALITY_NAME | REMOVED | VOTED_VHL | VOTES_VHL | VOTED_DAL_NOT_IN_VHL |
| ACCOMACK COUNTY | 20 | 1 | 7 | 0 |
| ALBEMARLE COUNTY | 94 | 31 | 162 | 0 |
| ALEXANDRIA CITY | 309 | 58 | 204 | 0 |
| ALLEGHANY COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| AMELIA COUNTY | 5 | 2 | 9 | 0 |
| AMHERST COUNTY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| APPOMATTOX COUNTY | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| ARLINGTON COUNTY | 264 | 55 | 185 | 0 |
| AUGUSTA COUNTY | 42 | 12 | 37 | 0 |
| BATH COUNTY | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| BEDFORD COUNTY | 31 | 14 | 60 | 0 |
| BLAND COUNTY | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| BOTETOURT COUNTY | 6 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| BRISTOL CITY | 3 | 1 | 7 | 0 |
| BRUNSWICK COUNTY | 4 | 3 | 15 | 0 |
| BUCHANAN COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| BUCKINGHAM COUNTY | 6 | 1 | 13 | 0 |
| BUENA VISTA CITY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| CAMPBELL COUNTY | 3 | 1 | 10 | 0 |
| CAROLINE COUNTY | 18 | 4 | 15 | 0 |
| CARROLL COUNTY | 18 | 6 | 26 | 0 |
| CHARLES CITY COUNTY | 8 | 4 | 26 | 0 |
| CHARLOTTE COUNTY | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| CHARLOTTESVILLE CITY | 51 | 16 | 51 | 0 |
| CHESAPEAKE CITY | 192 | 67 | 267 | 0 |
| CHESTERFIELD COUNTY | 501 | 74 | 276 | 0 |
| CLARKE COUNTY | 16 | 7 | 19 | 0 |
| COLONIAL HEIGHTS CITY | 25 | 4 | 10 | 0 |
| COVINGTON CITY | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| CRAIG COUNTY | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| CULPEPER COUNTY | 51 | 9 | 32 | 0 |
| CUMBERLAND COUNTY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DANVILLE CITY | 43 | 5 | 13 | 0 |
| DICKENSON COUNTY | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| DINWIDDIE COUNTY | 18 | 6 | 25 | 0 |
| EMPORIA CITY | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| ESSEX COUNTY | 8 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| FAIRFAX CITY | 32 | 9 | 26 | 0 |
| FAIRFAX COUNTY | 1428 | 271 | 737 | 2 |
| FALLS CHURCH CITY | 8 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| FAUQUIER COUNTY | 45 | 9 | 16 | 0 |
| FLOYD COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| FLUVANNA COUNTY | 6 | 3 | 12 | 0 |
| FRANKLIN CITY | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| FRANKLIN COUNTY | 13 | 7 | 36 | 0 |
| FREDERICK COUNTY | 45 | 8 | 24 | 0 |
| FREDERICKSBURG CITY | 48 | 4 | 12 | 0 |
| GALAX CITY | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GILES COUNTY | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GLOUCESTER COUNTY | 9 | 3 | 6 | 1 |
| GOOCHLAND COUNTY | 10 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| GRAYSON COUNTY | 6 | 2 | 12 | 1 |
| GREENE COUNTY | 16 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
| GREENSVILLE COUNTY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| HALIFAX COUNTY | 10 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| HAMPTON CITY | 147 | 45 | 176 | 0 |
| HANOVER COUNTY | 35 | 6 | 23 | 0 |
| HARRISONBURG CITY | 161 | 13 | 27 | 0 |
| HENRICO COUNTY | 381 | 40 | 178 | 0 |
| HENRY COUNTY | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| HIGHLAND COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| HOPEWELL CITY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY | 5 | 2 | 21 | 0 |
| JAMES CITY COUNTY | 65 | 13 | 46 | 0 |
| KING AND QUEEN COUNTY | 3 | 2 | 7 | 0 |
| KING GEORGE COUNTY | 10 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| KING WILLIAM COUNTY | 5 | 3 | 37 | 0 |
| LANCASTER COUNTY | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| LEE COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| LEXINGTON CITY | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| LOUDOUN COUNTY | 484 | 127 | 414 | 0 |
| LOUISA COUNTY | 19 | 7 | 36 | 0 |
| LUNENBURG COUNTY | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| LYNCHBURG CITY | 53 | 13 | 51 | 0 |
| MADISON COUNTY | 2 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| MANASSAS CITY | 110 | 15 | 43 | 0 |
| MANASSAS PARK CITY | 51 | 6 | 22 | 0 |
| MARTINSVILLE CITY | 18 | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| MATHEWS COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| MECKLENBURG COUNTY | 16 | 8 | 19 | 0 |
| MIDDLESEX COUNTY | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| MONTGOMERY COUNTY | 31 | 5 | 21 | 1 |
| NELSON COUNTY | 7 | 4 | 20 | 0 |
| NEW KENT COUNTY | 14 | 9 | 36 | 0 |
| NEWPORT NEWS CITY | 233 | 55 | 219 | 0 |
| NORFOLK CITY | 247 | 55 | 220 | 0 |
| NORTHAMPTON COUNTY | 7 | 2 | 7 | 0 |
| NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY | 4 | 3 | 11 | 0 |
| NORTON CITY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NOTTOWAY COUNTY | 12 | 4 | 31 | 0 |
| ORANGE COUNTY | 12 | 7 | 15 | 0 |
| PAGE COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PATRICK COUNTY | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| PETERSBURG CITY | 59 | 15 | 68 | 0 |
| PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY | 25 | 11 | 52 | 0 |
| POQUOSON CITY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PORTSMOUTH CITY | 121 | 46 | 132 | 0 |
| POWHATAN COUNTY | 6 | 1 | 8 | 0 |
| PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY | 14 | 3 | 11 | 0 |
| PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY | 34 | 5 | 9 | 0 |
| PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY | 915 | 152 | 448 | 1 |
| PULASKI COUNTY | 14 | 4 | 7 | 0 |
| RADFORD CITY | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| RAPPAHANNOCK COUNTY | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| RICHMOND CITY | 345 | 65 | 241 | 1 |
| RICHMOND COUNTY | 2 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| ROANOKE CITY | 193 | 22 | 68 | 0 |
| ROANOKE COUNTY | 34 | 4 | 5 | 0 |
| ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| ROCKINGHAM COUNTY | 78 | 16 | 48 | 0 |
| RUSSELL COUNTY | 9 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
| SALEM CITY | 15 | 4 | 17 | 0 |
| SCOTT COUNTY | 6 | 4 | 17 | 0 |
| SHENANDOAH COUNTY | 42 | 6 | 18 | 0 |
| SMYTH COUNTY | 11 | 5 | 21 | 0 |
| SOUTHAMPTON COUNTY | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY | 137 | 7 | 18 | 0 |
| STAFFORD COUNTY | 242 | 45 | 133 | 2 |
| STAUNTON CITY | 9 | 2 | 11 | 0 |
| SUFFOLK CITY | 85 | 37 | 169 | 1 |
| SURRY COUNTY | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| SUSSEX COUNTY | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| TAZEWELL COUNTY | 9 | 3 | 13 | 0 |
| VIRGINIA BEACH CITY | 380 | 82 | 348 | 0 |
| WARREN COUNTY | 30 | 6 | 24 | 0 |
| WASHINGTON COUNTY | 21 | 6 | 22 | 0 |
| WAYNESBORO CITY | 3 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| WESTMORELAND COUNTY | 8 | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| WILLIAMSBURG CITY | 18 | 4 | 7 | 0 |
| WINCHESTER CITY | 45 | 5 | 6 | 0 |
| WISE COUNTY | 6 | 5 | 13 | 0 |
| WYTHE COUNTY | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| YORK COUNTY | 38 | 15 | 51 | 0 |
| 8566 | 1756 | 6111 | 10 |
Discussion
Of particular concern is that we can see that there has been a significant order of magnitude (10 x) drop in the number of reported non-citizen removals in the MUS data starting in the MUS covering May 2026. This coincides with the recent aforementioned opinion letter from AG Jones to the Department of Elections that advised ELECT to NOT remove self-identified non-citizens from the rolls. The previous AG (Miyares) made the case that the fact that all of these removals were initiated by individual actions of self-identification via interactions with DMV or the Courts, etc., made the program appropriately “individualized” in accordance with NVRA. The courts had tentatively sided with Miyares argument and ultimately denied the injunction requested by the DOJ, LWV and fellow litigants. However, the case was withdrawn shortly after the election of AG Jones. AG Jones has now taken the opposite stance of Miyares, and is now effectively granting the relief that the DOJ & LWV were requesting in their suit even though the supreme court did not grant the injunction. Because of this new direction to not remove self identified non-citizens, this explains the order of magnitude decrease in the number of non-citizen removals that we observe in the MUS data.
Another point of concern is that even though we see a decrease in the removal rate per the policy changes above, we see a significant increase in the number of ballots associated with non-citizen records compared to our previous documented trends. The table below summarizes all of our previous posts on the subject, including this post. As can been seen in the table, while the cumulative number of identified non-citizen removals has increased by 1233 since our last report, the number of associated ballots cast has gone up by 2596 (nearly double). This equates to an average number of identified associated ballots cast per removed non-citizen of 0.713, while all other previous analyses had averages between 0.35 and 0.566.
| Analysis Date | Removals | With Vote History | Associated Ballots Cast | Ratio of removed Non-Citizens to Ballots Cast |
| 2024-03 | 1,481 | 335 | 838 | 0.565833896016205 |
| 2024-07 | 1,973 | 399 | 938 | 0.475418144956918 |
| 2024-09 | 2,299 | 438 | 1,034 | 0.449760765550239 |
| 2024-10 | 3,533 | 537 | 1,296 | 0.366827059156524 |
| 2024-11 | 3,761 | 569 | 1,333 | 0.354427014091997 |
| 2024-12 | 3,765 | 562 | 1,318 | 0.350066401062417 |
| 2025-03 | 4,400 | 683 | 1,775 | 0.403409090909091 |
| 2025-08 | 6,086 | 1,003 | 2,839 | 0.466480446927374 |
| 2026-01 | 7,343 | 1,225 | 3,515 | 0.47868718507422 |
| 2026-06 | 8,566 | 1,756 | 6,111 | 0.713401821153397 |
It is important to note that the records identified in the MUS are only those resulting from individuals who were removed from the voter rolls by ELECT after self-identifying as a non-citizen via interactions with DMV, ELECT, or other official avenues, and that the data presented here specifically excludes those individuals that were subsequently reinstated onto the voter rolls.
The fact that a small number of these identified non-citizen registrations are also associated with (presumably … if the data from ELECT is accurate) illegally cast ballots in previous elections does raise a number of questions that citizens should be (politely) asking and discussing with their legislators, elected and appointed government officials. Each act of non-citizen voting is a de-facto disenfranchisement of legal voters rights, and is a punishable offense under VA law.
Additionally, this evidence which is derived from only official state records, directly contradicts multiple news media reports and attestations that non-citizen voting is a “Myth”, and that non-citizen voting happens “almost never”. If the data from ELECT is accurate, then there are at least 6,111 ballots that have been cast by non-citizen voters just since 2019. Now, that is still very infrequent, but it is not “almost never.” It is a legitimate concern … and these discoveries are only the registrations that have been found and removed from the voter roles by ELECT and that we can observe in the data.
It should also be reiterated that these are only the records that we can observe given our data repository, and how often we can realistically purchase and acquire voter history and voter registration information. It is therefore likely that this represents a significant undercount of the occurrences of non-citizen voters and non-citizen voting.
Due to the infrequent nature of these data purchases, it is very likely that some individuals have had their voter history or voter registration information completely removed from the record in between our purchases. Additionally, we know that the MUS data does not entirely encompass all transactions performed on the RVL by the department of elections, so there may be yet other unknown transactions that we are missing.
We do not know how many exist that we do not know about, and with the recent change in guidance from the new AG Jones to ELECT we expect that our ability to observe and report on these issues into the future will be significantly impacted, as ELECT will stop removals of many of these records, and therefore they will not show up in the MUS records, even though they have been correctly flagged via self-identification.