CNN —
Republican officials in Virginia on Monday filed one of the first major voting lawsuits to be filed in the high court ahead of next week’s presidential election, challenging a program in which the state removes suspected noncitizens from voter rolls. It asked the Federal Supreme Court to allow implementation.
The appeal has political significance, as former President Donald Trump and other Republicans see the incident as part of a false narrative of widespread illegal voting by people in the country.
The lawsuit is one of several election-related lawsuits already filed with the Supreme Court or expected to be filed before the Nov. 5 election, the last day before the election. These lawsuits are being filed amid an incredibly close race between President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and as polls show widespread distrust of the Supreme Court.
The election has already begun with millions of Americans voting early, and lawsuits are pouring in. But according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, 56% of registered voters say they have some or no confidence that the Supreme Court will make the right decision on any case related to the contest.
The numbers are highly divided across political lines, with Trump supporters about twice as likely as Harris supporters to express at least moderate confidence in the court.
Given the relatively small number of voters involved in the Virginia incident and the fact that the state has reliably supported Democratic presidential candidates in the past few elections, the outcome could have an impact on the race. gender is low. But President Trump has already repeatedly promoted the lawsuit on social media, at one point describing a lower court’s ruling against the program as “election interference.”
Virginia officials asked the high court to take action by Tuesday. Chief Justice John Roberts asked parties opposing the program to file an emergency appeal by Tuesday afternoon, indicating the court would move quickly on the matter.
Virginia officials told the judge that a lower court’s decision blocking the program “irreparably harms Virginia’s sovereignty, confuses voters, and creates an undue burden on election systems and administrators.” , would likely mislead non-citizens into believing they were authorized to vote, making this criminal offense invalid.” Voter Franchise. ”
At issue is an order signed in August by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) that requires the Department of Transportation and other agencies to be more aggressive in checking people who identify as non-citizens against voter rolls. It required election authorities to take action. Purge matches. State officials claim that about 1,600 people removed from voter rolls under the program claimed to be “not citizens.”
But the Biden administration and voting rights groups filed suit, and a U.S. district court concluded last week that at least some eligible U.S. citizens were stripped of their registration, and therefore their right to vote, under the program. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said none of the parties involved in the lawsuit know exactly the citizenship status of the purged voters because the information has not been verified.
Giles, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, said Friday that “neither the court nor the parties know as long as we sit in this court that the people who were removed from the rolls were in fact noncitizens.” Ta.
A three-judge panel from the District Court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, all appointed by Democratic presidents, immediately blocked Virginia from implementing the program.
The legal battle centers on the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law that prohibits states from making “systematic” changes to their voting rolls within 90 days of a federal election. The Biden administration and voting groups said Yonkin’s order created just such a systematic program within the so-called “quiet period” required by federal law.
Despite President Trump’s protests, none of the court orders prevent states from conducting eligibility assessments on individual residents.
Trump and other Republicans cling to claims of illegal voting. That was part of the argument they made to explain the former president’s defeat in 2020. However, instances of documented non-citizens voting are extremely rare. A recent audit of Georgia’s 8.2 million people on its rolls found that only 20 noncitizens were registered, and only nine of them voted.
In their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Virginia election officials are relying in part on an obscure legal theory that cautions federal courts against making last-minute changes to voting rules before an election. The so-called “Purcell doctrine,” rooted in a 2006 Supreme Court decision, is intended to protect federal courts from getting dragged into last-minute election disputes.
However, the principle has so far been widely understood to apply to matters involving state law. It’s not a presidential order. And in this case, federal law is involved in establishing the quiet period.
This story has been updated with additional details.
