Supreme Court Greenlights Virginia’s Voter Roll Purge: Thousands of Non-Citizens Removed in Controversial Decision

On September 20, 2024, a woman voted in person on the first day of early voting in Virginia. (Photo credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Look at Chinese websites that are prohibited from creating mirror sites. Return to the genuine Chinese website.

[Watch China, October 31, 2024](Watch China reporter Gao Yun compiled/comprehensive report) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday (October 30) to allow Virginia to remove more than 1,600 non-citizens from the state before next week’s election. removed from the electoral roll. It is forbidden to create mirror websites on Chinese websites. Return to the genuine Chinese website.

In this vote, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court voted unanimously in favor, while the three liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Kaitan Ketanji Brown Jackson both opposed the ruling. Previously, the Biden administration had successfully persuaded a lower court to halt the cleanup on the grounds that the cleanup was too close to the election.

While the ruling is not the final word on the legality of such voter purge operations, it gives Virginia immediate enforcement authority. This means the state does not have to reinstate deleted voter eligibility and can continue similar cleansing based on DMV citizenship data.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin launched the cleanup plan through an executive order in August. After learning of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Youngkin said it was “a victory for common sense and electoral fairness.”

Youngkin said: “A clean voter roll is one of the important measures we take to ensure a fair election. The people of Virginia know that we use paper ballots, the counting machines are not connected to the Internet, we have a strict chain of custody system, and signatures are implemented Verification, the ballot box is monitored and secure, and there is a ‘triple check’ counting process.”

However, the Department of Justice argued that this action violated the 90-day “quiet period” required by the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Under the law, states are prohibited from conducting systematic voter purges before elections.

But Virginia countered in its emergency application that this “quiet period” provision does not apply to non-citizens, saying that states have the authority to clear the registrations of non-citizens, minors and fictitious persons at any time.

Virginia relies primarily on Department of Motor Vehicles records to determine the status of non-citizens who do not declare themselves citizens in the records.

However, several civil society groups that have joined forces with the Biden administration to challenge the purge, including the Virginia Immigrant Rights Alliance, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and the Federation of African Communities, quickly identified legal citizens among the purged lists.

While Virginia’s attorneys acknowledged the possibility of inaccuracies, they maintained that ensuring accuracy of voter qualifications is an important state responsibility.

In this legal dispute, Virginia has received support from 26 other Republican state attorneys general across the United States, the Republican National Committee, and multiple conservative groups.

Virginia is the second state in recent history to be embroiled in legal controversy over its purge of foreign voters. Previously, the Republican Secretary of State in Alabama’s attempt to purge more than 3,000 voters was halted by a federal judge, but the state did not appeal.

Source: Look at China

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