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Virginia asks Supreme Court to allow it to clear noncitizen suspects

Posted on by L. Dreeye
Virginia asks Supreme Court to allow it to clear noncitizen suspects

In one Virginia county, 43 voters were purged after proving—sometimes repeatedly—that they were U.S. citizens.

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WASHINGTON — Virginia Republicans have asked the Supreme Court to allow them to reinstate the removal of suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares filed an emergency motion in the high court hours after a federal appeals court on Sunday upheld a lower court’s decision to stop the purge.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles on Friday blocked the state’s program, which has removed about 1,500 names since Aug. 7, because federal law prohibits voter purges for 90 days after an election. She also ordered the state to reinstate the registrations of those who had been canceled during that period.

Miyares told the high court the decision violated “Virginia law and common sense.”

He also said it would confuse voters, overburden Virginia’s election machinery and administrators and likely lead noncitizens to incorrectly think they are allowed to vote.

Miyares said the Supreme Court must intervene by Tuesday because the district court has ordered Virginia to comply by Wednesday.

Voting rights groups fought government policies because they excluded naturalized citizens from the rolls if they had previously declared themselves noncitizens on vehicle forms. Gov. Glenn Yankin’s program notified suspected noncitizens that they would be removed if they did not prove their citizenship within 14 days.

But since the auto declarations, civil rights groups and the Justice Department challenged the program in court, it could have been years, arguing that naturalized citizens were being removed from the voter rolls.

Advocacy groups cited Prince William County Registrar Eric Olsen as saying at a Sept. 30 election board meeting that his office reviewed 162 people listed as noncitizens in the state’s computer system and found that 43 had voted previously. But his office checked and found that all 43 people had confirmed their citizenship – some up to five times – but were still removed from the voter rolls.

“For the second time in three days, a federal court has ruled that purges of eligible citizens in Virginia are illegal,” said Ryan Snow, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We call on the Supreme Court to stop this madness and make it clear that it is unacceptable to block the voting rights of eligible citizens.”

Studies have shown that few suspected noncitizens vote, presumably due to the threat of criminal charges and deportation if caught. Research by the Brennan Center for Justice and the libertarian Cato Institute has shown that non-citizen voting is virtually non-existent.

But this year, Republicans have made the removal of suspected noncitizens one of the main claims in their voter integrity lawsuits.

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