Washington- The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to proceed with removing about 1,600 suspected non-citizens from its voter rolls just days before the 2024 election.
The high court granted a request from state officials to stay a lower court order that blocked Virginia from continuing its systematic voter removal program launched in August, exactly 90 days before Election Day. A provision of the National Voter Registration Act requires states to implement programs to purge ineligible voters from registration rolls up to 90 days before federal elections.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have rejected the Virginia officials’ request.
Virginia officials had asked the Supreme Court to grant its request for emergency relief by Tuesday. They claimed the district court’s order violated Virginia law “and common sense” and “imposed various disruptive measures.”
The injunction issued by the lower court will infringe on Virginia’s “sovereignty, confuse its voters, overburden its election machinery and administrators, and likely cause noncitizens to think they are allowed to vote, a criminal offense which will disenfranchise eligible voters,” the state says. officials wrote.
Federal and Virginia laws prohibit noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
Virginia’s request for Supreme Court intervention stems from a Justice Department lawsuit against the state earlier this month that targeted an executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. The order formalized a systematic program to remove from statewide voter rolls people who were unable to verify that they were citizens with the Department of Motor Vehicles. State officials said the program is in place and the order simply changes the frequency of data reporting from monthly to daily.
The Justice Department argued that implementation of the program violates the so-called quiet period provision, a section of the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits states from implementing programs to expunge voters. ineligible voters from their lists no later than 90 days before a deadline. election. Federal officials said the quiet period was intended to mitigate the risk of eligible voters being mistakenly removed from voter rolls through automatic suppression programs and to ensure they have sufficient time to correct any errors.
Youngkin announced his state’s systematic agenda on August 7, exactly 90 days before the November 5 general election.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles on Friday granted the Justice Department’s request for a preliminary injunction, ordering the state to reinstate the voter registrations of approximately 1,600 people who had been removed from the state rolls in the part of Youngkin’s program. Giles ruled that the state likely violated federal law by systematically canceling these voters’ registrations during the so-called quiet period.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the district court’s order Sunday, saying in a brief order that it was “not persuaded” by Virginia officials’ argument that the state program does not violate the rights of federal voters. registration law.
The three-judge panel found that state officials were wrong to claim they were ordered to re-register about 1,600 non-citizens as voters because they failed to establish that the people deleted under Youngkin’s program were actually non-citizens. He reiterated that some of the people whose voter registrations were canceled are eligible to vote.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, Virginia officials argued that the silent period provision does not apply to the removal of noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls, since they do not have no right to vote at all. Nonetheless, they said those who have been identified as non-citizens and registered voters will be notified that their registrations will be canceled and will have 14 days to verify that they are citizens.
State officials argued in their filing that the Justice Department and voting rights groups asked the district court to “engage in the Commonwealth’s long-standing and reasonable election processes in the month after the election and weeks after early voting begins.”
They also refuted the characterization of its efforts to purge suspected non-citizens from its lists, noting that Youngkin’s order did not create the state’s process but rather increased the frequency of data sharing between agencies from monthly to daily.
The district court’s injunction, state officials argued, “would impose significant costs, confusion and hardship on Virginia, creating a massive influx of work for its clerks during the critical week before the election , and probably making non-citizens believe they are eligible. vote.”
But the Justice Department said Virginia’s program fell squarely within the silent period provision and argued that the district court’s order impacts “only a discrete set of “identified voters”. This does not prevent Virginia officials from conducting individualized investigations or taking other steps to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in general elections, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a Supreme Court filing .
“[W]without injunction to remedy [Virginia’s] In case of violation of the silent period provision, eligible citizens will face undue pressure on their right to vote, up to and including deprivation of the right to vote,” she said.
The Justice Department filed a similar suit against Alabama over its process to remove about 3,200 potential noncitizens from its voter registration list. Prosecutors said the state began its scheme on Aug. 13, 84 days before Election Day, and wrongly considered more than 2,000 eligible voters to be ineligible.
A federal judge earlier this month blocked Alabama from continuing the program to remove ineligible voters from registration rolls and emphasized that the order does not restrict the secretary of state’s ability to remove non-voters. -citizens on the Alabama voter rolls. She also ordered the state to restore the eligibility of disabled voters.
