Virginia on Monday asked the Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to remove roughly 1,600 voters from its rolls that it believes are noncitizens. The request comes after a federal appeals court on Sunday unanimously upheld a federal judge's order restoring the registrations of those 1,600 voters, reports the AP, whom the judge said were illegally purged under an executive order by the state's Republican governor. Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he ordered the daily removals in an effort to keep noncitizens from voting. But US District Judge Patricia Giles ruled late last week that Youngkin's program was illegal under federal law because it systematically purged voters during a 90-day "quiet period" ahead of the November election.
The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued to block Youngkin's program earlier this month. They argued that the quiet period is in place to ensure that legitimate voters aren't removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can't be rectified in a timely manner. Youngkin said he was simply upholding a state law that requires Virginia to cancel noncitizens' registration. The ruling Sunday from the three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the judge who ordered the restoration of voters' registrations. The appeals court found that Virginia's process for removing voters established no proof that those purged were actually noncitizens.
Youngkin's executive order, issued in August, required daily checks of data from the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify noncitizens. State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. The plaintiffs said that a legitimate voter and citizen could have his or her registration canceled simply by checking the wrong box on a DMV form, and presented evidence showing that at least some of those removed were citizens. The appeal filed to the Supreme Court on Monday by Virginia's Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, asks the high court to intervene by Tuesday. Without any intervention, the injunction issued last week by Giles requires Virginia to notify affected voters and local registrars by Wednesday of the restorations she ordered.
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