The court’s conservative majority left in place on Wednesday Virginia’s purge of voter registrations that the state says is intended to stop people who aren't U.S. citizens from voting, The Associated Press and other media report.
Over the dissents of the three liberal justices, the court granted an emergency appeal from Virginia’s Republican administration led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The court’s one-paragraph order gave no reasoning for the justices’ decision, as is often the case with emergency appeals, Scotusblog says.
Virginia isn't a swing state, but the case underscores a baseless theory of former President Trump and his allies, who've cast voting by undocumented immigrants as a threat in an effort to stoke doubt about the election outcome, says The New York Times.
It's illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and studies have found that instances of it happening are extremely rare, the Times notes.
The court acted on Virginia’s appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally purged more than 1,600 voter registrations in the past two months. A federal appeals court previously had allowed the judge’s order to remain in effect.
Youngkin says voters who believe they were improperly removed from the voting rolls still can vote in the election because Virginia has same-day registration.
Civil rights groups, backed by the Biden administration, had challenged the plan, saying it had led to some legal voters being removed from the rolls.
The state's plan flagged people for removal if they checked a box on a Department of Motor Vehicles form declaring they aren't citizens or if they left it blank, says NBC News.
Rina Shaw, 22, of Chesterfield, Va., says she was born in Virginia, has lived in the state her entire life and has never left the United States. She says she may have forgotten to check a citizenship box on a form when she was updating her voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles while getting her learner’s permit.
The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” before elections for the maintenance of voter rolls so legitimate voters aren't removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can't be quickly corrected.
Virginia maintained that the NVRA’s “quiet period” provision doesn't apply because the law doesn't bar the removal of noncitizens who weren't eligible to vote in the first place, Scotusblog says.
Wendy Weiser, vice president for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, says, “For any eligible voter in Virginia who may be impacted by the purge, please use same-day registration to cast a vote in this election. Or call 866-OUR-VOTE if you need assistance.”
In a similar lawsuit in Alabama, a federal judge this month ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who'd been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that about 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive actually were legally registered citizens, AP says.
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