US supreme court rules Virginia can continue removing voters from rolls

Virginia does not have to restore the registrations of 1,600 voters, some of whom appear to have been wrongly removed, ahead of next week’s election, the US supreme court said on Wednesday.

The court made the decision on its emergency docket and did not give a rationale for its decision, which is customary for rulings on an expedited basis. All three liberal justices on the court – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – said they would not have halted a lower-court ruling earlier in October ordering the state to restore the voter registrations.

The legal dispute centers on a 7 August executive order by the Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, directing the state to run its voter registration rolls against DMV data on a daily basis to check for non-citizens. The justice department and civil rights groups sued, saying that the state was violating a federal law that prohibits systematic removals of voters within 90 days of a federal election.

The US district judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request last week to restore the voters.

Voting experts have long warned that comparing voting rolls to DMV data is not a reliable way to find non-citizens on the rolls because there may be paperwork errors and people can become naturalized after getting their driver’s license. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit said they had identified several people who were in fact citizens but had their registrations wrongly canceled.

Donald Trump and allies had distorted the removals, saying that the lower court decision meant that non-citizens were going to be placed back on the voter rolls. But the state had not provided conclusive evidence that many of those removed were non-citizens.

The Virginia attorney general, Jason Miyares, a Republican, praised the supreme court’s action on Wednesday, saying it would “keep non-citizens off our voter rolls”.

The decision is the latest of rulings by the US supreme court in voting disputes that side with Republicans.

Virginia, which is predicted to vote for Kamala Harris this fall, provides same-day voter registration, allowing anyone who was wrongfully removed to re-register at the polls.