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.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Holy shit. That’s. I don’t have words. The entire reason for the 90 day period is to prevent fuck ups that stop citizens from voting. Fuck ups we already know have happened. They have 275 days a year to purge the rolls. And this fucking court is going to let them purge in the 90 day period?

    I’m not going to be surprised when a state like Virginia “accidently” purges 50,000 Democrats who voted in the last couple elections. Just enough to put the thumb on the scale and still call it an oopsie. This is yet another way they plan to make sure red states stay red. And why Trump says he’ll use the military. Because in any functioning democracy this would result in immediate riots.