Supreme Court Co-Signs Virginia's Urge To Voter Purge
Well, that’s not good.
Welp, a certain six judges on the Supreme Court — you know which ones — have stepped in to allow Virginia and its smirky Confederate-statue-hugging Governor Glenn Youngkin to carry on with the voter-roll purge that Youngkin executive-order-demanded on August 7, exactly 90 days before the election. Which is clearly against federal law! The state has already purged 1,600.
Youngkin may look like a hedge-fund golf-course daddy, but he is as period-tracking extreme as they come, do not be fooled.
Gee, certain people on the Supreme Court sure were all asses-on-fire to get a decision out on that one fast, even though they took eight fucking months to decide if a federal court could even begin to try former President Felon for his attempts to overthrow the government! It’s almost like the guys who took luxury vacations and other goodies from Harlan Crow and Paul Singer are not even bothering to hide whose bag they’re in any more.
Anyway, the law that Virginia’s purge is breaking is right there in Section 8(c)(2) of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993:
A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.
So not only did Virginia not complete it in 90 days, that was exactly when they started. It is not even gray-area! Youngkin had the previous three years and nine months to do the purging. Why didn’t he do it any time before then? Guess he was too busy with the other purging that also accidentally whoops-oops kicked the wrong people off the rolls.
But SCOTUS is like, gotta break some eggs to make an omelet, we guess.
States can take ineligible voters off the rolls one by one all the way up to Election Day, no problem. But mass removals are a problem, because they often scoop up eligible voters. And that is exactly what happened!
The state removed 1,600 people suspected of not being citizens, possibly because they did not check the “citizen” box on their drivers’ license application. But turns out many of them ARE citizens, who either got their citizenship at some point after getting a license, or simply found themselves on the purge list by accident. NPR found quite a few who were born here in the US of A and got dropped from the rolls for unknown reasons. It could be because the Driver’s License application in Virginia is confusing: The “citizen” question is above the start of the application, and it says clearly that it’s “requested but not required to apply.” So a lot of people left it blank.
Possibly enough to get people purged. Possibly, because exactly how Virginia actually mixed up its secret sauce recipe for purging is a secret. There’s no master database of US citizens. This is why mass purges are not allowed in the first place!
But that won’t stop Republicans from trying. Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Nevada, Nebraska, New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, voters overseas … they have not found any mass vote-fraud yet. But the efforts force states into spending millions to legally defend themselves, and help perpetuate the narrative that there must really be fraud and illegals voting, or why else would the Democrats try to keep the purges from happening?
MORE ELECTIONS FUCKERY!
The good news is that Virginia has same-day voter registration, so removed voters will still be able to cast provisional ballots during early voting or on Election Day. And Harris has a healthy lead there, of about 5 to 6 points.
But the bad news is, WTF, SCOTUS? This does not bode well for future bullshittery, by which we mean greenlighting other purges, even ones that might happen single-digit days before an election.
SIGH.
[NPR/ SCOTUS order]
I’ve seen a hell of a lot in public life, but never a Supreme Court majority backing lawlessness.
So to be clear the Supremes wouldn’t purge Trump from the ballot because “we have to let the people decide” BUT they WILL purge voters in order to prevent the people from deciding?