Trump Ally Begs Supreme Court to Let Him Keep Blocking Voting Rights
Noncitizens voting isn’t a statistical issue in the 2024 election—but that doesn’t mean that Donald Trump’s allies have given up the ghost.Eight days out from Election Day, a legal effort by Virginia’s election leadership to slash their voter rolls has reached the Supreme Court’s shadow docket via an emergency application for a stay. The filing, submitted Monday by several members of the state election board, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Susan Beale, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares asks the Supreme Court to uphold a recent regulation that systematically purged 1,600 names from the state’s voter roll. Virginia argued that it believes the voters did not provide adequate evidence of citizenship to the Department of Motor Vehicles.In separate cases, the Department of Justice and several organizations of Virginia voters sued Old Dominion for the regulation, arguing that the change was illegal and plainly flouted the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which bars states from changing their voting rules within 90 days of an election.On Friday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered that the state reinstate the voters, but MAGA Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin quickly appealed the ruling. On Sunday, the Fourth Circuit unanimously refused to grant a stay, writing in a six-page opinion that the state’s arguments were “weak” and that there were several other options available to Virginia to cull the roll outside of the overreaching regulation. “My own best guess is that the Supreme Court will deny Virginia’s request for a stay,” wrote Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck Monday in his newsletter One First. “Of course, whether or not 1600 voters will be restored to the rolls may not seem like a big deal in a state in which the presidential race isn’t likely to be that close, but this is the same Virginia in which a state legislative race—and control of the House of Delegates—was settled by a drawing after a literal tie in 2017.”As part of Trump’s election conspiracymongering, the former president has campaigned on the notion that noncitizen voters are upending the presidential election results and, by extension, American democracy in favor of the Democratic Party. But an audit at the epicenter of Trump’s conspiracy—Georgia—uncovered just 20 noncitizens out of the Peach State’s 8.2 million voter roll, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shared on Wednesday. Those cracks in the system accounted for just 0.00024390243902439 percent of the state’s voting population.Nine out of the 20 noncitizen registrations had participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Election officials canceled the registrations and subsequently reported the individuals to law enforcement.
Noncitizens voting isn’t a statistical issue in the 2024 election—but that doesn’t mean that Donald Trump’s allies have given up the ghost.
Eight days out from Election Day, a legal effort by Virginia’s election leadership to slash their voter rolls has reached the Supreme Court’s shadow docket via an emergency application for a stay.
The filing, submitted Monday by several members of the state election board, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Susan Beale, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares asks the Supreme Court to uphold a recent regulation that systematically purged 1,600 names from the state’s voter roll. Virginia argued that it believes the voters did not provide adequate evidence of citizenship to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
In separate cases, the Department of Justice and several organizations of Virginia voters sued Old Dominion for the regulation, arguing that the change was illegal and plainly flouted the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which bars states from changing their voting rules within 90 days of an election.
On Friday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered that the state reinstate the voters, but MAGA Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin quickly appealed the ruling. On Sunday, the Fourth Circuit unanimously refused to grant a stay, writing in a six-page opinion that the state’s arguments were “weak” and that there were several other options available to Virginia to cull the roll outside of the overreaching regulation.
“My own best guess is that the Supreme Court will deny Virginia’s request for a stay,” wrote Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck Monday in his newsletter One First. “Of course, whether or not 1600 voters will be restored to the rolls may not seem like a big deal in a state in which the presidential race isn’t likely to be that close, but this is the same Virginia in which a state legislative race—and control of the House of Delegates—was settled by a drawing after a literal tie in 2017.”
As part of Trump’s election conspiracymongering, the former president has campaigned on the notion that noncitizen voters are upending the presidential election results and, by extension, American democracy in favor of the Democratic Party. But an audit at the epicenter of Trump’s conspiracy—Georgia—uncovered just 20 noncitizens out of the Peach State’s 8.2 million voter roll, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shared on Wednesday. Those cracks in the system accounted for just 0.00024390243902439 percent of the state’s voting population.
Nine out of the 20 noncitizen registrations had participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Election officials canceled the registrations and subsequently reported the individuals to law enforcement.
