Supreme Court reinstates Youngkin’s voter purge order in Virginia
by Zach Schonfeld - 10/30/24 10:15 AM ET
Virginia can cancel more than 1,600 voter registrations the state claims are held by noncitizens in advance of next week’s election, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The emergency decision marks a loss for the Biden administration, which convinced lower courts to reinstate the registrations because the removals took place too close to the election.
The court’s three liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — publicly dissented.
State officials claim the list comprises noncitizens, but a district judge found that some were eligible voters, and Virginia officials hadn’t shown the others “were, in fact, noncitizens.”
Though research indicates it is a rare occurrence, Republicans have drawn attention to noncitizen voting in a series of lawsuits this election cycle. Virginia was backed at the high court by all the nation’s 26 other Republican state attorneys general, the Republican National Committee and multiple conservative groups.
Democrats view the strategy as aimed at sowing doubt on the legitimacy of the election to lay the groundwork for ultimately contesting the results.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration sued Virginia election officials over the 1,600 people removed from the state’s voter rolls. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issued an executive order in August formalizing the program.
In a statement, Youngkin called the Supreme Court’s decision a “victory for commonsense and election fairness.”
“Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” Youngkin said. “Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, counting machines not connected to the internet, a strong chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secured drop boxes, and a ‘triple check’ vote counting process to tabulate results.”
The Justice Department contended the cancellations violated the 90-day “quiet period” mandated under the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), during which states are prevented from enacting systematic voter purges in the lead-up to an election.
Virginia in its emergency application argued that the quiet period doesn’t apply to noncitizens.
“States are free to systematically remove noncitizens, as well as minors and fictitious persons, at any time, including within 90 days of an election, without running afoul of the NVRA,” the state’s attorney general’s office wrote.
Even if noncitizens were protected, Virginia officials contended the court-ordered reinstatement was improper under a legal doctrine known as the Purcell principle, which states that courts shouldn’t intervene too close to an election to change voting rules.
Virginia based its claims of noncitizen voter registrations in part on matching Department of Motor Vehicles records in which the individuals did not attest they were citizens.
But a group of private organizations that challenged the removals alongside the Biden administration — the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, League of Women Voters of Virginia and African Communities Together — quickly identified citizens among the list.
“Notably, applicants have provided no reason to believe that any noncitizens have voted in past Virginia elections, or that any are likely to do so in the upcoming election,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings.
The Biden administration and private plaintiffs were backed by 17 former Republican members of Congress, who have all either left the party or endorsed Vice President Harris.
“To say this decision is a disappointment is an understatement. The Supreme Court just ignored a key provision of the National Voter Registration Act and the clear fact that Virginia purged eligible voters on the eve of the election,” Ryan Snow, an attorney representing the private plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The Hill has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
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