Virginia officials asked that the US Supreme Court grant the state’s request by Tuesday.
Virginia today asked the US Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to block about 1,600 people from being able to vote after a lower court ruled last week that the state ran afoul of voting laws when it canceled their registrations.
Last week, a federal judge ordered Virginia to restore the voter registrations of about 1,600 people after their registrations were canceled as part of a systematic state program. Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered the state Department of Elections to carry out the program exactly 90 days before election day, which a federal judge ruled ran afoul of the National Voter Registration Act.
Virginia officials asked that the US Supreme Court grant the state’s request by Tuesday.
Virginia’s voter removal program had been systematically removing voters from voting rolls based on old records with the Department of Motor Vehicles indicating they were noncitizens. But as a federal judge noted, the records could be mistaken and people’s citizenship status can change. Without more review, there was no evidence that these 1,600 people are noncitizens, the judge said last week.
The judge ruled that Virgina can remove noncitizens from its voter rolls on an individualized basis, but not in the systematic way it was doing under the program that Youngkin ordered. Some voters were improperly removed and had to re-register to vote, according to court filings.
Claiming to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls has become a new tactic in the right’s effort to suppress the vote and stoke fears about US elections. Such programs are almost always riddled with mistakes of people being kicked off the rolls improperly. A similar saga is currently playing out in Iowa.
You can read today’s filing with the US Supreme Court here.
