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The Supreme Court will decide whether to pause two lower court rulings finding that Virginia illegally removed voters on the eve of an election.
WASHINGTON (CN) — Virginia asked the Supreme Court Monday to remove 1,600 people from the state’s voter rolls with just over a week until Election Day.
Two lower courts found that the state illegally purged voter registration during the 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections. Virginia asked the justices to reverse, arguing that reinstating the registrations would encourage voter fraud.
“Not only will the Commonwealth of Virginia be irreparably harmed absent a stay, so will its voters and the public at large,” Virginia’s Solicitor General Erika Maley wrote. “The injunction requires Virginia to restore over 1,600 self-identified noncitizens to Virginia’s voter rolls.”
In August, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin called for daily checks of voter lists using Department of Motor Vehicles data to remove ineligible voters. Conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of voter registrations across the country and pushed claims of noncitizen voting despite minimal evidence of widespread voter fraud. The Republican National Committee filed a flow of lawsuits targeting voter ID laws, mail ballots and voter roll maintenance.
Youngkin said Virginia only removed those already ineligible to vote.
“Virginia’s process removed noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote,” Maley wrote in the state’s application.
Immigrant rights groups, the League of Women Voters and the Justice Department filed a lawsuit, claiming that the DMV’s outdated information would likely disenfranchise legitimate voters. The groups say the DMV will list a newly naturalized citizen who received a driver’s license as a lawful permanent resident as a noncitizen.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles, a Joe Biden appointee, ordered Virginia to restore the purged registrations, finding that removing voters en masse violated the National Voter Registration Act’s prohibition against large-scale registration removal within 90 days of an election.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the ruling over the weekend.
At the Supreme Court, Virginia argues that noncitizen registrations aren’t protected by federal election law because they were never eligible to vote in the first place.
“If a person cannot become a ‘registrant’ because he is not and cannot be an ‘eligible applicant,’ then he cannot become a ‘voter,’” Maley wrote. “And if the person is not a ‘voter,’ eligible or otherwise, then he is not protected under the Quiet Period Provision.”
Former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that the lower courts’ ruling derived from President Joe Biden’s weaponization of the Justice Department and predicted that the Supreme Court would right those wrongs.
“This is a totally unacceptable travesty, and Governor Youngkin is absolutely right to appeal this ILLEGAL ORDER, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hopefully fix it!” Trump wrote on X following the Oct. 25 ruling from Giles.
Virginia asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay by Wednesday. The justices asked immigration rights groups to respond to Virginia’s application by 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
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