Supreme Court allows Virginia to remove non-citizens from voter rolls

The Supreme Court is allowing Virginia to continue its efforts to remove self-declared non-citizens from the voter rolls, granting the Old Dominion’s request to temporarily suspend the Legislature after the decision was put on hold by lower courts.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares he said on Monday, the state filed a request for an emergency suspension of the Legislature in the Supreme Court to block a lower court’s ruling to restore 1,600 voter registrations made up of non-citizens.

In August, Governor Youngkin ordered a daily review of voter registration records to ensure that non-citizens were not registered to vote. The state has attempted to remove more than 1,600 people it says have identified themselves as foreigners, giving those people two weeks to correct the error if they mistakenly checked a box on the registration form and misrepresented themselves.

Department of Justice defendant Virginia for attempting to cancel voter registrations, arguing that the state could remove citizens who falsely identified as noncitizens.

On Friday, District Court Judge Patricia Giles issued an injunction against Virginia and ordered it to reinstate canceled voter registrations. She said state officials had no evidence showing that the people whose voter registrations were revoked were not citizens of the country. She also said the state’s automated system violated the National Voter Registration Act.

Virginia attorney Charles Cooper admitted in court that the 1,600 people may include citizens who misidentified themselves as foreigners. But he said requiring Virginia to reinstate all 1,600 people would mean “there (will be) hundreds of foreigners on those lists.”

Virginia filed a motion for a stay of judgment with the Supreme Court after the appeals court, in a rare Sunday evening ruling, refused to overturn Judge Giles’ order.

A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Virginia “has the ability to prevent noncitizens from voting by canceling registration on an individual basis or prosecuting any alien who votes.”

However, the justices found that Virginia’s automated noncitizen identification system violated the 90-day election silence period that prevents states from making major changes to voter rolls implemented under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

“If a foreigner votes, it invalidates the legal vote. And that is a disservice,” Cooper said.

Following Judge Giles’ ruling, Mr. Youngkin said: “Let us be clear about what just happened: Just eleven days before the presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate more than 1,500 people – who identified themselves as foreigners – on the voter rolls. “Nearly all of these individuals have previously provided immigration documents confirming their alien status, which has recently been verified by federal authorities.”

Miyares said the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Virginia was an attempt to “weaponize the legal system against the enemies of so-called progress.”

“This is the definition of a legal fee. Openly choosing weapons over good processes and obeying the law over honesty is not democracy: it is plain and simple intimidation, and I always stand up to my persecutors,” he added.