Wyoming Supports Supreme Court Ruling to Remove…

The issue of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections has been a hot debate throughout the 2024 election season, coming to a head on Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia would be able to remove suspected non-citizens from its voter rolls , which Wyoming supported.

Both Gov. Mark Gordon and Secretary of State Chuck Gray have stressed that noncitizens should not be able to vote in American or Wyoming elections.

“The Supreme Court rightly upheld Virginia’s efforts to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls,” Gray told the Cowboy State Daily. “States have the power and responsibility to ensure that only citizens vote in our elections.”

In an amicus brief filed Monday with the Supreme Court, Wyoming joined 25 other states in urging the Supreme Court to allow Virginia to remove “self-declared non-citizens” from its voter rolls.

In short, Wyoming and other states argue that they are “interested in preserving their constitutional authority to determine voter qualifications in elections and in preserving the integrity of elections by allowing only eligible citizens to vote.”

“The Constitution leaves decisions regarding voter qualifications to the people of Virginia,” the document says. “And Virginians have decided that non-citizens cannot vote.”

All of the states that signed on to the agreement except one, New Hampshire, have Republican majorities.

Gray said Wyoming joining the amicus brief was too little, too late on Gordon’s part. He and Gordon sparred earlier this year when the governor vetoed the legislation. Gray proposed tightening voter registration requirements at polling places.

“It is disappointing that Governor Gordon continues to do the bare minimum to address this issue only for his allies in the media to try to fool people into believing he is doing something about it when in fact he has done nothing,” Gray said. “The initial protections that Governor Gordon vetoed left Wyoming exposed and must be implemented.”

Hot button problem

Former President Donald Trump framed Virginia’s campaign as ensuring that non-citizens wouldn’t vote, but President Joe Biden’s administration and voting rights groups argue it would potentially deny legal citizens the right to vote.

A spokesman for the governor said he has heard concerns from Wyoming residents about the impact the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies could have on non-Wyomingians trying to vote.

Last Friday, a unanimous panel of judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Virginia’s request.

As a result of Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, approximately 1,600 people will be removed from Virginia’s voter rolls. Although these individuals identified themselves as foreign nationals, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia argued that they had not been fully vetted for citizenship status.

Non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections, but can vote in local elections in some parts of the country except Wyoming.

Early in his administration, Biden issued an executive order aimed at encouraging more eligible voters to register to vote. The order called on federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in a manner “consistent with applicable law.”

GOP lawmakers, state election officials like Gray and other Republican activists made claims this summer that the Biden administration used the order to overstep the federal government’s role in elections in order to drum up more Democratic voters and register non-U.S. citizens, who cannot legally vote in federal elections. elections.

The Virginia case began with an executive order signed by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in August that required election officials to take more aggressive steps to match Department of Motor Vehicles residents to voter rolls who self-identified as noncitizens and to remove those matches.

He called Wednesday’s decision “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 wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, non-Internet-connected counting machines, a robust chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secured drop boxes, and a triple-check vote counting process to tabulate the results.”

Wyoming Angle

In September, Gordon signed an executive order directing Wyoming state agencies to prevent and report non-citizens voting.

“It seemed appropriate for the state of Wyoming to not participate in any effort to provide ineligible voters the opportunity to register,” Gordon said during a news conference earlier this month.

During the news conference, Gordon was asked if he had concerns that singling out non-citizen voters could lead to intimidation of legal Latino voters or a reluctance to vote. Gordon dismissed that concern.

“I don’t think we want to intimidate anyone,” Gordon said. “That’s why I encourage anyone who is here legally as a citizen to be able to vote.”

Documented cases of foreigners voting in the US are rare, but have been discovered. According to CNN, a recent audit in Georgia of 8.2 million people on the registration lists found that there are 20 registered foreigners, nine of whom voted.

Gray repeatedly cited the case of an alleged illegal immigrant who was removed from voter rolls in Campbell County as an example of the importance of the issue to Wyoming.

This individual, Christian Lopez, 42, voted in Wyoming’s 2020 general election and, as of August 2023, was still listed on the state’s voter rolls and registered as a Republican.

Court documents show Lopez pleaded guilty to making a false declaration to obtain a passport in 2022, and in 2023 he was sentenced to 60 days in prison. He used a false birth certificate to obtain a Wyoming driver’s license and register to vote in Wyoming and attempted to use a false birth certificate to obtain a passport.

Gray’s voter policy, which Gordon vetoed, would have required people registering to vote in Wyoming to prove residency if their ID didn’t already show it, but Gordon said the move exceeded the secretary of state’s statutory authority.

“Despite Governor Gordon’s unfortunate veto, our office intends to do everything in our power using our existing resources to ensure that non-citizens who attempt to vote in Wyoming elections are investigated and prosecuted,” Gray said.

Leo Wolfson you can arrive at [email protected].