Supreme Court allows purge of Virginia voter rolls

What happened

The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday gave Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) permission to purge some 1,600 people from state voter rolls days before the election, overruling two lower courts that had ordered the voters to be reregistered. The Supreme Court's order was unsigned, but the three liberal justices dissented, saying they would have denied Virginia's emergency appeal.

Who said what

Youngkin signed an order in August to "expedite the removal of registered voters whose driver's license applications indicated or suggested that they were not U.S. citizens," The Washington Post said. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled he couldn't do a systematic purge this close to an election because it clearly violated the 90-day "quiet period" stipulated in the National Voter Registration Act. "It is not happenstance that this executive order was announced on the 90th day," she said in court.

The "specter of immigrants voting illegally has been a main part of the political messaging this year" from Donald Trump and other Republicans, "even though such voting is rare in American elections," The Associated Press said. Youngkin called Wednesday's decision a "victory for commonsense and election fairness." He "bristled at the suggestion" that legal voters were "cut off" the rolls, the Post said, arguing that the eligible U.S. citizens caught up in the purge can use Virginia's same-day registration process to cast a provisional ballot.

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What next?

Cutting 1,600 of Virginia's 6 million registered voters won't tip the presidential race like 2000's Bush v. Gore ruling, but the Supreme Court is being asked to weigh in a lot this election and "dividing along partisan lines in a partisan election dispute six days before Nov. 5 — while providing zero explanation — is a little ominous," said The Economist's Steven Mazie.