Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Continue Voter Purge With Only Days Until Election

[h-hawk]

Seems like you should do this earlier when those erroneously purged would have time to do something about it.

• Summary
• Republican governor began new policy in August
• Judge had deemed policy change too close to election
• Supreme Court's three liberal justices dissent

WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated Virginia's decision ahead of the Nov. 5 election to purge from its voter rolls about 1,600 people who state officials concluded were not American citizens, though President Joe Biden's administration and voting rights groups said actual citizens were among those struck.
The justices on Wednesday blocked a judge's Oct. 25 order requiring Virginia to restore the affected people's voting registration. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in U.S. federal elections. Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, on Aug. 7 announced a new policy for culling from Virginia's official voter registration list people "unable to verify that they are citizens," with daily data sharing among state agencies.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from Wednesday's action.
Youngkin hailed the court's action on an initiative he described as a "critical fight to protect the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens."
"This is a victory for commonsense and election fairness," Youngkin said.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles had decided that Virginia's "systematic program" of voter list maintenance occurred too close to the election in violation of federal law.


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us...-purge-1600-purported-noncitizens-2024-10-30/

 

[St. Louis Hawk]

Court simply ignoring the National Voter Registration Act and the State's admission that its purge will remove eligible voters.

This is judicial activism cons. Congrats.

@Aardvark86 @AuroraHawk @Tenacious E others … What is this Court doing?

 

[franklinman]

Not a surprise coming from this GARBAGE COURT. Can't put anything past them.

 

[Aardvark86]

Court simply ignoring the National Voter Registration Act and the State's admission that its purge will remove eligible voters.

This is judicial activism cons. Congrats.

@Aardvark86 @AuroraHawk @Tenacious E others … What is this Court doing?

1. As is usually the situation in scotus cases, things are never so simple. The Commonwealth did have some arguments, and when I read them were actually a little better than I'd expected. Some of them based on Purcell (which I didn't think much of), some based on the text of NVRA (applicability to ineligibiles), and some were probably more interpretive (individualized v systemic purge process). Of course we don't really know which of these resonated.
2. Either way, on the facts there was a certain factual weirdness that helped the commonwealth too in that it is a bit odd to think there's a presumption of registration for a person whose form indicates ineligibility on its face, and who otherwise gets a chance to make their case to the contrary if they are excluded for noncitizenship.
3. And, as i understand it, those who may be deregistered also have a secondary safety net via same day registration process by which they can make their case, so in the 'balancing of harms' that attends injunction decisions, that was probably in play too.

With that said:
1. I'm a little surprised - though less than i would have been a week ago after reading the pleadings - that they issued the stay; my instinct has been that they're going to try to avoid a lot of this as long as they can.
2. Substantively, this is a tempest in a teapot, in that VA is not really going to be close, and given that we're dealing with a universe of 1600 or so, most of whom presumably are in fact noncitizens given their self-identification and therefore ineligible to vote, and who appropriately will not try to do so.
3. Now if they take/stay the PA case, which is essentially about whether a person can cast a provisional ballot if their mail ballot has been DQ'd for the absence of a postmark because of USPS error, well, that would very likely cause me to raise an eyebrow. Aside from the fact that I don't think much of the state law catch-22 argument about a total preclusion against counting a provisional if a mail (even a procedurally defective one) has been received, the argument there is essentially that the state legislature's power to set election terms, etc. is nearly absolute. kind of a variation on the single state legislature argument, which i've mostly found laughable and only the kind of thing a navel gazing law professor could love.