The Daily Populous Wednesday October 30th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by apnews.com and submitted by Real-Work-1953

Follow live: Updates from AP’s coverage of the presidential election.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday allowed Virginia to resume its purge of voter registrations that the state says is aimed at stopping people who are not U.S. citizens from voting.

One Virginian, whose registration was canceled despite living in the state her entire life, called the purge “a very bad October surprise.”

The high court, over the dissents of the three liberal justices, granted an emergency appeal from Virginia’s Republican administration led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The court provided no rationale for its action, which is typical in emergency appeals.

The justices acted on Virginia’s appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally purged more than 1,600 voter registrations in the past two months. A federal appeals court had previously allowed the judge’s order to remain in effect.

Such voting is rare in American elections, but the specter of immigrants voting illegally has been a main part of the political messaging this year from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Trump had criticized the earlier ruling, calling it “a totally unacceptable travesty” on social media. “Only U.S. Citizens should be allowed to vote,” Trump wrote.

Youngkin said voters who believe they were improperly removed from the rolls can still vote in the election because Virginia has same-day registration.

“And so there is the ultimate, ultimate safeguard in Virginia, no one is being precluded from voting, and therefore, I encourage every single citizen go vote,” Youngkin told reporters.

That option was noted also by the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the White House.

“Every eligible voter has a right to cast their ballot and have their vote counted, and this ruling does not change that,” campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said in a statement. “Our campaign is going to make sure every eligible voter is able to vote. Voting by noncitizens remains illegal under federal law.”

Rina Shaw, 22, of Chesterfield, Virginia, said she was born in Virginia, has lived in the state her whole life and has never left the U.S.

Shaw thinks she may have forgotten to check a citizenship box on a form when she was updating her voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles while getting her learner’s permit.

“My first reaction was that that was just ridiculous and it shouldn’t have been allowed in October, of all months. It should have been something that happened six months before the election rather than right on the eve of it,” Shaw said.

She planned to cast her ballot during early voting on Wednesday and said she still found the error troubling. Shaw said her voter registration has now been restored.

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued the state earlier in October, arguing that Virginia election officials, acting on an executive order issued in August by Youngkin were striking names from voter rolls in violation of federal election law.

The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections for the maintenance of voter rolls so that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that cannot be quickly corrected.

Youngkin issued his order on Aug. 7, the 90th day before the Nov. 5 election. It required daily checks of data from the state Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify people who are not U.S. citizens.

Protect Democracy, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit, cited media interviews with other voters as showing that the Youngkin administration’s purge has removed U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.

One example is Nadra Wilson, who lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, and told NPR she got swept up in the purge. “I was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. I’m a citizen,” Wilson said, before showing her American passport as proof of her citizenship.

Project Democracy said in a statement that “this program removes eligible voters. Virginia has not presented any evidence of noncitizens participating in elections. Because there is none. And it’s actually eligible VA voters that have been caught in the middle of this election-subversion scheme.”

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles said elections officials still could remove names on an individualized basis, but not through a systematic purge.

Giles had ordered the state to notify affected voters and local registrars by Wednesday that the registrations have been restored.

Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.

In a similar lawsuit in Alabama, a federal judge this month ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

Lavoie reported from Richmond. Associated Press writers Matthew Barakat in Alexandria, Virginia, and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

MonsiuerGeneral on October 30th, 2024 at 14:33 UTC »

Check your voter registration as well as the status of your ballot (if you elected to vote by mail) in Virginia here: https://vote.elections.virginia.gov/VoterInformation/Lookup/status

It's super quick and easy. I just went through the process and confirmed my registration was active and my mail-in ballot was received.

Additionally, if you're voting in-person this will tell you where your local polling place is (if you don't know or are not sure) as well as a bunch of other useful information.

[edit]

At the suggestion of u/chatte-epicee; Please also note that if you are finding yourself purged or have simply forgotten to register to vote: It is NOT too late!

> Same-Day Registration is available during Early Voting and on Election Day.

PMSoldier2000 on October 30th, 2024 at 14:33 UTC »

Several actual citizens came forward and said they were part of the purge as well. So what is SCOTUS’s response? “Oh well, you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette.”

Insectshelf3 on October 30th, 2024 at 14:24 UTC »

to be clear, federal law explicitly prevents states from purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election. there is no room for interpretation on fhis because the text of the national voters registration act reads as follows:

> (2)(A) A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.

this supreme court order is essentially exempting virginia from that requirement to purge a list of voters they allege are “non-citizens” but that we know for a fact includes citizens less than a week before elections day.