Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Resume Voter Registration Purges

By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday allowed Virginia to resume the trial cleansing voter registers what the state thinks it is heading towards stopping non-US citizens from voting.

The Supreme Court, over the dissent of three liberal justices, granted an emergency appeal filed by Virginia’s Republican administration, led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The court did not provide any justification for its action, which is typical for extraordinary complaints.

The justices granted Virginia’s appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally deleted more than 1,600 voter registrations over the past two months. A federal appeals court previously allowed the judge’s ruling to stand.

Such voting is rare in American electionsbut a major part of the problem is the specter of illegal immigrants voting political messages this year from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Trump criticized the earlier ruling, calling it a “totally unacceptable travesty” on social media. “Only US citizens should be able to vote,” Trump wrote.

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued the state in early October, arguing that Virginia election officials, acting on an order Youngkin issued in August, were striking names from voter rolls in violation of federal election law.

The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” before elections to maintain voter rolls so that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls as a result of bureaucratic or last-minute mistakes that cannot be quickly corrected.

Youngkin issued his order on August 7, the 90th day before the November 5 elections. This required daily checking of data from the state Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify non-U.S. citizens.

Protect Democracy, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, cited media interviews with voters as showing that the Youngkin administration’s purge removed U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.
One example is Nadra Wilson, who lives in Lynchburg, Virginia he told NPR was caught up in the purge.

“I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I am a citizen,” Wilson said, before showing her U.S. passport as proof of citizenship.

Project Democracy said in a statement that “this program removes eligible voters. Virginia presented no evidence of non-citizen participation in the election. Because there isn’t any. And it was actually eligible VA voters who were caught in the middle of this election subversion scheme.”

Voting advocates say you can still register to vote in Virginia during the early voting period or on Election Day and cast provisional ballots.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles said election officials could still remove names individually, but not through a systematic purge.

Giles ordered the state to notify affected voters and local registrars by Wednesday to restore registration.

Youngkin said the Supreme Court’s action was “a victory for common sense and election integrity.”

“Clean voter rolls are an important part of the comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the integrity of our elections,” he said in a written statement.

Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.

In a similar lawsuit in Alabama, a federal judge ordered the state to restore the eligibility of more than 3,200 voters who were deemed ineligible foreign nationals. Testimony by state officials in the case showed that approximately 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were considered inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

Associated Press writers Matthew Barakat in Alexandria, Virginia, Denise Lavoie in Richmond and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.