Virginia appealing case about voter rolls to Supreme Court

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares on Monday said his office was challenging the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Fourth Circuit ruled on Sunday that 1,500 voters’ names had to go back onto Virginia’s voter rolls before the Nov. 5 election—affirming a lower court’s ruling two days before. The voters in question had been taken off the rolls by state authorities earlier this election cycle.

What’s going on here? The U.S. Department of Justice earlier this month sued Virginia over an executive order that Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued exactly 90 days before the Nov. 5 election. That executive order instructed election officials to expunge the names of everyone on the state’s voter registration lists who could not prove their citizenship to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. The DOJ argued that the executive order violated the National Voter Registration Act, which it said prohibits changes to state voter registration lists within 90 days of an election.

A federal judge sided with the Department of Justice on Friday. She ordered Virginia to put more than 1,500 names back on the state’s voter rolls. Youngkin criticized the ruling and said that his administration would appeal it. He also claimed the roughly 1,500 voters in question had all acknowledged that they were not citizens. After the appeals court’s decision on Sunday, Youngkin thanked Miyares for taking the fight to the Supreme Court.

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta and Leo Briceno’s recent encyclopedia of election integrity in The Stew.