The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today allowed Virginia to continue its purge of more than 1,600 ineligible voters from the state’s voter rolls. [pdf ruling here]

The stay was issued 6 to 3, along ideological lines, with leftist Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting with the opinion that illegal aliens and ineligible voters should be permitted to cast ballots.

[Source]

BACKGROUND – On August 7th, Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order expediting the removal of noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. The state maintained that the program followed only removed those who were ineligible to vote due to lack of citizenship.  These were self-declared ineligible voters.

Earlier this month the Justice Department and advocacy groups intervened, suing the state.  They contended that Virginia had purged some eligible voters and that it did so in violation of a federal law that bars removals from voting rolls in the 90 days prior to an election.

[…] A federal district court agreed, ordering Virginia to restore the approximately 1,600 voter registrations that were cancelled. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that order. Virginia then appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the state to strike the voters purged in the 90 days prior to the election.

The state contended that the lower courts “misinterpreted the NVRA.” They argued that the “quiet period” cannot apply to noncitizens, since they are already ineligible to vote. Even if the “quiet period” did apply here, the state argued, the program was sufficiently individualized, not systematic.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court sided with Virginia, leaving the purged voters off the rolls and allowing the purge to continue.

In a statement, Youngkin called the order “a victory for commonsense and election fairness.”  (link)