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What we know about the voter roll purge in Virginia

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Today, just six days before the election, the Supreme Court made a ruling allowing Virginia to continue purging individuals from state voter rolls. The state says it's removing ineligible noncitizens, but NPR's Jude Joffe-Block has spoken to U.S. citizen voters whose registrations were also canceled as part of the state's program. She joins us now. Hi, Jude.

JUDE JOFFE-BLOCK, BYLINE: Hi there.

CHANG: Hi. OK, so clarify for us what Virginia was doing and what the Supreme Court did today.

JOFFE-BLOCK: Well, yeah. Well, states have a responsibility to clean up their voter rolls. And the key issue is they have to take care to not remove eligible citizens when they do that, and they also have to be mindful of when that's happening. Virginia has an ongoing program that's been continuing to remove people from the rolls who they believe are noncitizens based on documents they filed or forms they filled out at the DMV. But we've talked to some U.S. citizens, as you mentioned, who mistakenly were ensnared in this because, one reason is, those DMV forms can be confusing.

So last Friday, a federal judge said Virginia was systematically removing voters too close to the election in violation of federal law. And the judge said Virginia had to stop and had to restore 1,600 voters back on the rolls who had been removed since August. And then Virginia appealed up to the Supreme Court, which this morning blocked that lower court ruling from taking effect. And that allows Virginia to keep removing people from the rolls.

CHANG: Got it. OK, so Virginia can keep removing people from the rolls. But you spoke to U.S. citizens who have been affected by this, right? What does this ruling mean for them?

JOFFE-BLOCK: Well, this is a really important point because Virginia does allow people to register in person all the way through Election Day. So that means that if anyone is eligible to vote who was mistakenly taken off the rolls, they can still vote. And this is Ryan Snow. He's an attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

RYAN SNOW: They should feel confident in going down either, you know, during early voting through Saturday or on Tuesday, on Election Day, and fill out the same-day registration form and cast their provisional ballot, and that that ballot will be counted.

JOFFE-BLOCK: He said his organization and others are going to be monitoring that. And, you know, we spoke with a U.S. citizen in Lynchburg, Virginia, Nadra Wilson, and she was removed from the voter rolls as part of this program. And she was able to re-register, and she told me yesterday that she voted early.

CHANG: Good. OK, well, Jude I know that you've done a lot of reporting about claims that noncitizens could vote illegally in this election. How does what's happening in Virginia tie into that?

JOFFE-BLOCK: Well, yeah, this narrative about noncitizens voting in large numbers, it's not backed by evidence, but it is being promoted by former President Trump and his allies. And a lot of election lawyers are concerned this is being used to sow doubt in the election. It could even potentially be used to challenge results. And we've also seen this narrative prompting policy. So Republican states like Virginia have been taking actions in the name of removing noncitizens, but these actions are sweeping up U.S. citizens. It happened in Alabama as well, where the state wound up acknowledging in court that its program to remove noncitizens mistakenly flagged more than 2,000 eligible voters. So voting rights groups are extremely concerned about this, and they strongly disagree with the Supreme Court action today.

CHANG: Well, this decision from the Supreme Court comes less than a week from Election Day. What do legal experts say about the timing of all of this?

JOFFE-BLOCK: Yeah, well, so there's no written decision from the Supreme Court, so it's a little bit murky how to even interpret it. But I spoke with University of Baltimore law professor Kim Wehle. She said, given that this was happening on the shadow docket and that two lower courts had already ruled against Virginia, that it's hard not to see this action by the Supreme Court as political and ideological.

And I also spoke with Nate Persily. He's an election law expert at Stanford Law School. He said he was somewhat surprised. He says the fact that the court got involved on a case like this at the last minute means they don't plan to be sitting on the sidelines. It shows they're willing to be involved in some of the minutia of running an election. And we know a lot of litigation is headed their way this election season.

CHANG: That is NPR's Jude Joffe-Block. Thank you so much, Jude.

JOFFE-BLOCK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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