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Post by aj2hall on Oct 30, 2024 18:55:27 GMT
the Supreme Court. I have zero confidence in the conservatives. They are going to give Trump every edge they can. This case is not a good sign - they're interfering to remove people from the polls when it might be just an error. It feels like an endorsement of Republican voter suppression. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/30/virginia-noncitizen-voter-purge-supreme-court/Supreme Court allows Virginia effort to strike possible noncitizen voters
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) asked the justices to intervene after lower courts blocked efforts to cancel registrations of voters who could be noncitizens.
A divided Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for Virginia officials to remove about 1,600 voters from the state’s registration rolls less than one week before the presidential election.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) asked the justices to intervene after two lower courts blocked his efforts to cancel the registrations of voters who could be noncitizens — an issue Republican officials have seized on nationally to energize supporters even though noncitizen voting is extremely rare.
Ryan Snow, a lawyer for one of the groups challenging the purge, said the Supreme Court’s order ignores federal law that bars removing registered voters “on the eve of the election.”
The decision “is a blow to the many eligible Virginian voters who were unlawfully purged and will now face uncertainty about their ability to cast a ballot that will be counted,” Snow, who is counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. |
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pilcas
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,237 
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Post by pilcas on Oct 30, 2024 19:21:07 GMT
Yes, too much Maga in that court. I would not trust them either. We have started to lose our free press and have our very own oligarchs.
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Post by mom on Oct 30, 2024 19:23:20 GMT
Those who were purged can still vote --- Virginia allows in person registration and day of voting.
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Post by lucyg on Oct 30, 2024 20:00:50 GMT
Those who were purged can still vote --- Virginia allows in person registration and day of voting. OK good, that is something of a relief. But I find it shocking that the Supreme Court would allow this kind of last-minute, politically motivated election interference. I should know better by now. |
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Post by Scrapper100 on Oct 30, 2024 20:11:58 GMT
Those who were purged can still vote --- Virginia allows in person registration and day of voting. OK good, that is something of a relief. But I find it shocking that the Supreme Court would allow this kind of last-minute, politically motivated election interference. I should know better by now. That’s good to know but still it violates federal law to allow the purge. They have had years to do this so they wait until the last minute |
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Post by Merge on Oct 30, 2024 20:12:43 GMT
Those who were purged can still vote --- Virginia allows in person registration and day of voting. What do they need in order to (re) register? If I showed up on voting day and waited in line only to be told that my registration was not valid, and that I'd need to come back with stuff I don't normally carry with me like my birth certificate ... well, I'd probably do it, but lots of people wouldn't. Short story, if tricks like these didn't work to suppress some of the vote, Republicans wouldn't bother with them. |
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Post by mom on Oct 30, 2024 20:22:28 GMT
Those who were purged can still vote --- Virginia allows in person registration and day of voting. What do they need in order to (re) register? If I showed up on voting day and waited in line only to be told that my registration was not valid, and that I'd need to come back with stuff I don't normally carry with me like my birth certificate ... well, I'd probably do it, but lots of people wouldn't. Short story, if tricks like these didn't work to suppress some of the vote, Republicans wouldn't bother with them. Im not sure -- I saw an article on NPR about it though a week or so ago. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 30, 2024 20:55:00 GMT
I'm relieved that voters still have the opportunity to vote but still concerned about the actions of the conservatives and the signal that it sends to Republicans. www.npr.org/2024/10/30/g-s1-30644/supreme-court-virginia-electionsOn Aug. 7, exactly 90 days before Election Day, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order expediting the removal of noncitizens from the state's voter rolls. The state maintained that the program only removed those who were ineligible to vote due to lack of citizenship.
In early October, the Justice Department and advocacy groups sued, contending that the state had in fact purged at least some eligible voters and that it did so in violation of a federal law that bars systematic removals from voting rolls in the 90 days prior to an election. Specifically, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act creates a “quiet period” within 90 days of a federal election. During those 90 days, states are prohibited from “systematic[ally]” removing “ineligible voters” from the rolls because of the increased possibility of errors.
The challengers alleged that Virginia's voter purge did exactly what the federal law was aimed at preventing; it removed eligible voters who, as a result of the state's action, did not know they were no longer eligible to vote.
A federal district court agreed, ordering Virginia to restore the approximately 1,600 voter registrations that were cancelled. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that order. Virginia then appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the state to strike the voters purged in the 90 days prior to the election.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court sided with Virginia, leaving the purged voters off the rolls and allowing the purge to continue.
In a statement, Youngkin called the order "a victory for commonsense and election fairness."
Because Virginia allows in-person voter registration through Election Day, there is still time for eligible voters to register and vote in the election.
The significance of court's the ruling is more a matter of the signal it sends than how the court's action will effect the election in Virginia, where polls show Vice President Harris well ahead of former President Trump. The signal it sends is that if a majority of the justices had an appetite for election appeals like this one, they almost certainly will have an appetite for election appeals from more contentious states in the coming days and weeks. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 30, 2024 21:01:14 GMT
The other problem is making voters go through unnecessary steps to vote and making it more difficult for them. It probably will not make a significant difference in the outcome of the election, but it's the principle. Republicans just keep chipping away at voters' rights and suppressing the vote. www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5169204/virginia-noncitizen-voter-purgeBecause Virginia allows in-person voter registration through Election Day, there is still time for eligible voters to register and vote in the election.
Yet some Virginia voters who were removed in error may have missed the opportunity to request an absentee ballot. |
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Post by Merge on Oct 30, 2024 21:08:26 GMT
The other problem is making voters go through unnecessary steps to vote and making it more difficult for them. It probably will not make a significant difference in the outcome of the election, but it's the principle. Republicans just keep chipping away at voters' rights and suppressing the vote. www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5169204/virginia-noncitizen-voter-purgeBecause Virginia allows in-person voter registration through Election Day, there is still time for eligible voters to register and vote in the election.
Yet some Virginia voters who were removed in error may have missed the opportunity to request an absentee ballot.No it's never a huge suppression with any one thing, but with dozens of things designed to make voting more difficult and discourage eligible voters from voting, it all adds up. Death by a thousand cuts. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 30, 2024 21:08:47 GMT
This, too from the comments on the Post article is problematic. This ruling plays into the Republican false narrative that non-citizens are voting and even gives it some legitimacy. Canceling a registration because they "could be" non-citizens, rather than auditing the info of those people to check if they're non-citizens and only canceling then, is outright insanity.www.npr.org/2024/10/16/nx-s1-5147790/noncitizen-voting-claims-trumpIf things aren’t going Donald Trump’s way on election night, he has given a good idea of how he may contest the results.
Trump and his allies have zeroed in on the baseless claim that Democrats are encouraging newly arrived migrants to vote for them in the 2024 election.
"Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote," Trump said at the Sept. 10 presidential debate.
There’s no evidence of a plot like this. Moreover, it’s illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, and evidence shows instances of such voting are incredibly rare.
But it became clear this summer that the claim that noncitizens are poised to vote in big numbers had become one of the top false narratives leading up to the election. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 30, 2024 21:12:37 GMT
Also, this. The court acts quickly if it benefits Republicans like in this case or keeping RFK on the ballot, the Colorado case to keep Trump off the ballot etc. But in Trump's immunity case, they did the exact opposite.
Amazing how fast SCOTUS can move when it benefits Republicans ...
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Post by peasapie on Oct 30, 2024 22:50:11 GMT
Also, this. The court acts quickly if it benefits Republicans like in this case or keeping RFK on the ballot, the Colorado case to keep Trump off the ballot etc. But in Trump's immunity case, they did the exact opposite. Amazing how fast SCOTUS can move when it benefits Republicans ...Just curious - do you worry a lot about politics? Or do you just enjoy talking about it? No criticism here, it’s just that you post on this topic quite a bit so I wondered. |
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Post by lucyg on Oct 30, 2024 23:30:10 GMT
Also, this. The court acts quickly if it benefits Republicans like in this case or keeping RFK on the ballot, the Colorado case to keep Trump off the ballot etc. But in Trump's immunity case, they did the exact opposite. Amazing how fast SCOTUS can move when it benefits Republicans ...Just curious - do you worry a lot about politics? Or do you just enjoy talking about it? No criticism here, it’s just that you post on this topic quite a bit so I wondered. I appreciate aj2hall’s political posts. You may not intend your questions as criticism, but they do sound that way. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 31, 2024 0:14:01 GMT
Also, this. The court acts quickly if it benefits Republicans like in this case or keeping RFK on the ballot, the Colorado case to keep Trump off the ballot etc. But in Trump's immunity case, they did the exact opposite. Amazing how fast SCOTUS can move when it benefits Republicans ...Just curious - do you worry a lot about politics? Or do you just enjoy talking about it? No criticism here, it’s just that you post on this topic quite a bit so I wondered. Yes, at the moment, my anxiety about the election is through the roof. I do not trust the conservatives on the Supreme Court, Trump, his closest advisors or die hard Trump supporters. Everyone handles anxiety and worry in their own way. If you're not interested in political posts or mine in particular, feel free to skip them. |
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Post by peasapie on Oct 31, 2024 0:36:00 GMT
Just curious - do you worry a lot about politics? Or do you just enjoy talking about it? No criticism here, it’s just that you post on this topic quite a bit so I wondered. Yes, at the moment, my anxiety about the election is through the roof. I do not trust the conservatives on the Supreme Court, Trump, his closest advisors or die hard Trump supporters. Everyone handles anxiety and worry in their own way. If you're not interested in political posts or mine in particular, feel free to skip them. I’m anxious about it as well. That’s why I asked. I know how to skip posts, didn’t need you to tell me that. It was a polite question. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 31, 2024 0:40:20 GMT
Yes, at the moment, my anxiety about the election is through the roof. I do not trust the conservatives on the Supreme Court, Trump, his closest advisors or die hard Trump supporters. Everyone handles anxiety and worry in their own way. If you're not interested in political posts or mine in particular, feel free to skip them. I’m anxious about it as well. That’s why I asked. I know how to skip posts, didn’t need you to tell me that. It was a polite question. My apologies then for being defensive and making assumptions. As Lucy said, it didn't quite come across as a polite question. |
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Post by peasapie on Oct 31, 2024 0:43:59 GMT
I’m anxious about it as well. That’s why I asked. I know how to skip posts, didn’t need you to tell me that. It was a polite question. My apologies then for being defensive and making assumptions. As Lucy said, it didn't quite come across as a polite question. I reread and realize I could have done a better job phrasing the original question. Sorry about that - it wasn’t meant to be snarky. |
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Post by aj2hall on Oct 31, 2024 1:17:25 GMT
Regrettably, this opinion didn't make me feel any better. I'm far from a legal expert, but the Supreme Court decision is troubling for a lot of reasons. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/30/virginia-voter-purge-justices/Gift article - no paywall wapo.st/4f7buw0The Supreme Court, over the dissent of its three liberal justices, issued an unsigned order on Wednesday allowing Virginia to purge about 1,600 people from its voter rolls because the state has indications they are noncitizens. This is a misreading of the underlying law, a departure from the court’s usual standards in deciding when to intervene — and a chilling signal about what else the conservative justices might do in the event of other election disputes that reach the high court.
To be clear: Only American citizens should be allowed to cast a ballot in federal elections. Noncitizens should be prevented from voting and criminally prosecuted if they do. At the same time, ensuring those eligible to vote are able to do so is a competing imperative in administering elections. Those entitled to vote should not have that fundamental right arbitrarily denied.
As it happens, Congress enacted a law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, to address this very tension. It provides that “any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters” must be completed “not later than 90 days” before the election. The law strikes a sensible trade-off, giving eligible voters who are stricken from the rolls the opportunity to fix mistakes in time to exercise their franchise.
That didn’t stop Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin. He waited until August — within the 90-day “quiet period” — to order the removal of registered voters whose applications for driver’s licenses suggested they might not be citizens. The Biden administration and private voter rights’ organizations sued to stop him; they won (before Democratic-appointed judges) in the district and appeals courts. Youngkin then asked the Supreme Court to intervene and keep the state’s voter purge in place.
But it’s also true that this hassle is not just illegal — it’s unnecessary for Virginia to prevent noncitizens from voting, even within the quiet period. Nothing in the law prevents the states from looking into the case of voters it suspects to be noncitizens and making individualized determinations to remove them. The law just prevents the kind of systematic 11th-hour dragnet that Virginia engaged in here.
The high court’s action — stepping in despite the contrary findings of two lower courts — is particularly concerning because it departs so significantly from the court’s announced standards about when to engage in such emergency intervention: a “reasonable probability” that the court would agree to hear the case on a non-emergency basis, a “fair prospect” that Virginia would win in that circumstance, and that the balance of “equities” tips in Virginia’s favor because it would suffer irreparable harm if it were prevented from instituting the purge.
The court, as is customary in these emergency cases, didn’t explain itself, nor did the three justices who disagreed: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Even more worrisome is what this augurs in election cases down the road. “It is a concerning signal that the Supreme Court continues to think it should be the arbiter of all the rules of the road in election cases and continues to be hostile to federal voting protections,” said Danielle Lang of the Campaign Legal Center, which represented the private plaintiffs in the case.
If the justices were willing to step in here, where intervention was so unnecessary, so unwise and so out of the ordinary, where else will they interfere in this election? Tuesday’s order is a troubling omen in troubling times. |
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