West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Wednesday that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Virginia to move forward with its removal of roughly 1,600 alleged noncitizens from its voter rolls just days before the 2024 election.
The Supreme Court’s decision, issued without comment from a majority of conservative justices, will allow the state to keep off the rolls certain voters it suspects of being noncitizens.
The Attorney General recently joined a multistate coalition that urged the Supreme Court to allow Virginia to remove non-citizens from its voter roll.
“This is the correct decision, and it’s really very simple: only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote, period,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “This is about safeguarding our democratic election process.”
The 26-state amicus brief argued that a preliminary injunction that halted the state of Virginia from removing self-identified noncitizens from its rolls undermines states’ authority to determine voter qualifications. Virginia’s law provides mechanisms to protect election integrity, while ensuring only U.S. citizens remain on voter rolls.
“The upcoming election is hotly contested and has caused division around the country. Perhaps the division would be lower if the federal government were not interfering with the election via last-minute attacks on state efforts to police voter qualifications,” the amicus brief reads.
The Eastern District of Virginia Court’s recent decision to temporarily stop Virginia from removing noncitizens from its rolls would have resulted in Congress forcing a state to allow noncitizens to vote in an election over the objection of that state.
It converted Virginia’s statute into a federal mandate that forces states to allow noncitizens to vote in an upcoming election in violation of state law and federal law itself when a noncitizen is discovered on the rolls within 90 days of an election, according to the brief.
Attorney General Morrisey joined the Kansas-led brief with Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
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