The U.S. Supreme Court sided with Governor Glenn Youngkin Wednesday and allowed his plan to remove potential non-citizens from Virginia’s voting rolls to resume.
Youngkin took to Fox News Wednesday morning to celebrate an order from the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed his administration to continue a controversial voter purge program.
“As you can imagine, I’m incredibly pleased with the decision today and the Supreme Court reacted quickly and this is a victory for common sense,” he said.
Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares also praised the high court’s ruling.
“This is a win for common sense, it’s a rule for the rule of law, it means Virginia can be allowed to follow its own laws, this idea that Virginia citizens decide Virginia elections,” Miyares said.
At an event in Petersburg a bit later, the governor asked reporters not to tell Virginians the program was cutting legal citizens from voter rolls, but instead was an effort to stop non-citizen voters from voting.
Reporting by Radio IQ could not find one incident of noncitizen voting in the Commonwealth over the last 20 years. And one central Virginia voter who spoke with us Tuesday said she was improperly removed even after attempting to remedy the issue.
That voter was eventually able to re-register, but Ryan Snow, one of the attorneys who argued against the purge said similar stories of disenfranchisement were not uncommon.
“We know that Virginia’s voter purge has removed eligible voters. I've personally spoken with several of them, including one who was naturalized over 30 years ago," Snow told reporters in a digital press conference. "He’s voted every year since and voting is very important to him. He didn’t even receive the removal notice, he went to check his registration and found he’d been removed.”
Youngkin said those who were improperly removed from the rolls can use Virginia’s same-day registration law to vote on election day in person.
You can check your registration status at the Virginia Department of Elections website.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
