The U.S. Supreme Court said Wednesday that Virginia does not need to restore the registrations of 1,600 voters who appear to have been wrongfully removed for next week’s election.
The court made its decision based on the emergency docket, but did not clarify the basis for its decision, which is customary for speedy judgments. All three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said they would not have halted a lower court’s earlier October ruling ordering states to restore voter registration. .
The legal dispute centers on an Aug. 7 executive order by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) directing the state to check for non-citizens by checking daily voter registration rolls against DMV data. That’s what I did. The Justice Department and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit accusing the state of violating federal law that prohibits the systematic removal of voters within 90 days of a federal election.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles last week granted a request for an injunction to restore voters.
Voting experts have long said that comparing voting rolls to DMV data is a reliable way to spot non-citizens on voting rolls because they may have documentation errors and may become naturalized after getting a driver’s license. I warned you that this is not the way to go. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit said they have identified several people who were actually citizens but whose registrations were wrongfully revoked.
“We know this program excludes voters,” Protect Democracy, the nonprofit that sued Virginia, said in a statement. “Virginia has not produced any evidence that non-citizens participated in the election, because there is none. And in fact, the people who are caught in the middle of this election subversion scheme are eligible veterans. It’s the voters of the state.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that it disagrees with the Supreme Court’s order. “The Department brought this lawsuit to ensure that all eligible American citizens can vote in elections,” they wrote.
Donald Trump and his allies had distorted the removal by saying the lower court ruling meant noncitizens would be returned to the voter rolls. However, the state did not provide conclusive evidence that many of those excluded were noncitizens.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) praised the Supreme Court’s action Wednesday, saying it “keeps noncitizens off the voter rolls.”
Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin called the Supreme Court’s order “a victory for common sense and election integrity.”
“I am grateful for Attorney General Jason Miyares’ work in this important fight to protect the fundamental rights of Americans,” he said in a statement. “Clean voter rolls are a key part of the comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure election fairness.”
The ruling is the latest by the U.S. Supreme Court to side with Republicans in voting disputes.
Virginia, which is expected to vote for Kamala Harris this fall, allows same-day voter registration, allowing people who have been wrongfully removed to re-register at their polling place.
