SCOTUS Allows Virginia to Resume Voter Registration Purges

Authors: MARK SHERMAN and DENISE LAVOIE

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

One Virginia woman whose registration was canceled even though she had lived in the state all her life called the purge “a very unpleasant October surprise.”

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.

The specter of immigrants voting illegally was at the center of the debate political messages even though this year from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans such a vote is rare in American elections.

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

Youngkin said voters who believe they were wrongly removed from the voter rolls can still vote in the election because Virginia has same-day registration.

“So there is a final safeguard in Virginia, no one is excluded from voting, so I encourage every citizen to vote,” Youngkin told reporters.

The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the White House, also considered this option.

“Every eligible voter has the right to cast a ballot and have it counted, and this ruling does not change that,” campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said in a statement. “Our campaign will ensure that everyone eligible to vote will be able to vote. Voting by non-citizens remains illegal under federal law.”

Rina Shaw, 22, of Chesterfield, Virginia, said she was born in Virginia, has lived in the state all her life and has never left the United States

Shaw believes she may have forgotten to check the citizenship box on the form when she updated her voter registration with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles while obtaining her learner’s permit.

“My first reaction was that it was just ridiculous and shouldn’t be allowed in October, of all months. This should happen six months before the election, not just before it,” Shaw said.

She planned to vote during early voting on Wednesday and said she still found the error troubling. Shaw said her voter registration has been restored.

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

National Voter Registration Act requires 90-day “quiet period” before the elections for maintaining voter rolls so that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls as a result of bureaucratic or last-minute errors 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 other 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, and told the story 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.”

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