In a win for transparency in elections and voter-roll accuracy, Virginia’s Dept. of Elections (‘ELECT’) has apparently agreed to return full month and birth dates to voter-registration lists as required under federal statute.
The development comes after ELECT abruptly began withholding full date-of-birth data from client-service voter records in August, just three weeks before the start of the 2024 election in Virginia. The change left only year of birth in the records.
The sudden shift prompted a letter from the law firm Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) on behalf of EPEC in October. It alerted ELECT that the change violated federal law by withholding information critical to verifying the accuracy of the Commonwealth’s voter rolls. (See article below.)
RITE President and CEO Derek Lyons said in a statement about the decision to withhold the full birthdates:
“Virginia must reverse course and comply with federal law, which requires it to produce full birthdates of every person registered to vote in the Commonwealth to groups like EPEC that request it.
“In fact, in 2012, a court ordered Virginia to do just that so organizations can better evaluate the accuracy of the state’s voter registration records. Virginia’s sudden policy change is part of a troubling trend of states trying to impair the ability of organizations to assess the currency and accuracy of their voter rolls. Courts have consistently blocked these unlawful attacks on transparency, and we are confident they will do so again here if Virginia does not quickly course correct.”
EPEC’s Jon Lareau, who volunteers as Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director for the nonprofit educational charity, said in an X post that ELECT’s decision to return to its policy of full birthdates was a positive development.
“We are happy to hear [ELECT] is now making the correct decision on this issue. We previously worked with RITE to notify ELECT of our intent to file litigation on this matter, and are happy to hear that the need for litigation can possibly be avoided. We remain cautiously optimistic and will monitor this closely and let everyone know if/when the DOB data is finally restored.”
We are told that the Youngkin administration heard out concerns that had been raised over the policy change and decided to return to the prior policy of full Date of Birth to include Month/Date/Year of Birth.
The development comes at a time when federal courts are striking down state regulations that effectively restrict the public’s right to inspect voter lists for compliance with election laws.For example, election integrity group Judicial Watch just announced that a federal judge agreed with its lawsuit in Maryland to ensure the state makes critical voter-roll data available to public scrutiny.
In a statement, Judicial Watch said the court recognized “that restricting the use of the state’s voter rolls presented an obstacle to upholding federal voter roll maintenance as required by the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA).”
As several federal courts have recognized, the public records provisions of the National Voter Registration Act were intended to enhance the ability of private groups to monitor whether states are removing ineligible voters from their voter rolls.
Lareau’s and EPEC’s analysis of voter-records using just the year of birth continues despite the difficulties of only having year of birth.
For example, the chart below shows potential “clone” matches (duplicates) after an analysis of Virginia’s official Registered Voter List from January of 2025.
We are monitoring records to see when the change to full month and date of birth to voter records is restored.
EPEC Team and its board of directors are grateful to RITE’s assistance, and the administration, for the policy change that supports voter-roll accuracy and public trust in election management. #
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