Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley rebuked a federal judge’s recent decision to restore voter registration rolls for just over 1,600 people in Virginia, assuring the RNC would stand with Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) in fighting it.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles, an appointee of President Joe Biden, issued an order that found the governor’s executive order violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Whatley contended it is “absolutely ridiculous” that Youngkin’s executive order removing voters labeled as noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls would create legal trouble, pointing to how the governor used a law signed by then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, in 2006.
“Since we have filed suits ourselves, we have seen illegal aliens taken off the voter rolls in states like Arizona and Nevada,” Whatley said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “Thousands of ’em in states like Ohio and Texas, and here in Virginia, we’re going to stand by Gov. Youngkin. We’re very glad to see the attorney general, Jason Miyares, has already said they’re going to appeal that decision. But when it comes to election integrity across this country, we want the rules of the road in place before the voting starts.”
Virginia’s legal battle with the Department of Justice has been publicized by both Youngkin and state Attorney General Jason Miyares. Miyares argued the Biden administration was attempting to “weaponize the legal system against the enemies of so-called progress.” Trump has also condemned Giles’s decision during a rally in Texas and also brought it up during his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Ahead of the election, Whatley said the RNC feels it is in “very good shape” in the seven battleground states: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. He also contended Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is in “freefall” due to a lack of a closing argument, whereas Trump’s argument for fixing the economy and the border has been consistent since he announced his first presidential run in 2015.
Former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who has been active in helping Trump’s 2024 campaign in Georgia, assessed that the state’s early voting has been “record-level” at 2.8 million. She also claimed that “the most energy” for early voting has been found in Republican counties, which comes after Whatley and others convinced voters that “it is safe to vote early.”
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Georgia’s first day of early voting was on Oct. 15, which saw record-breaking turnout within the Peach State. Trump is seeking to win the state in the Electoral College this year after narrowly losing it to Joe Biden in 2020.
Virginia is another state that the Trump campaign could aim to break into this election cycle, as a recent poll indicated that Harris is leading Trump by a little more than 1 percentage point. The state of Virginia has not been won by a Republican presidential candidate since then-President George Bush sought reelection in 2004.