The Supreme Court has recently allowed the state of Virginia to cleanse its voter rolls of non-citizen participants, a move celebrated by Attorney General Gentner Drummond. Drummond, accompanied by 25 fellow state attorneys general, had previously filed an amicus brief pressuring the court to intervene after a lower court's ruling put the state's plan on hold. The high court answered with swift action, issuing a stay earlier today.
The Attorney General's office was quick to express satisfaction, in a statement obtained by Oklahoma government newsroom that "This is a victory for election integrity," Drummond said. "I am pleased the court affirmed the authority of states to police voter qualifications and keep non-citizens from voting." However, the previous decision of the Eastern District of Virginia Court had temporarily barred the removal, fearing it would violate federal mandate inadvertently.
In the same statement, Drummond argued that the earlier injunction bypassed principles of self-governance, imposing federal mandates that would contradict state and federal laws. Virginia's statute, Drummond contended, should remain unimpeded by what he viewed as an overstep by Congress that could force states to allow non-citizens to vote in direct violation of clear legal standards.
"Non-citizens are not eligible voters. They were not eligible voters before Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, they were not eligible when Congress passed the NVRA and they are not eligible today," said the brief, with defending election integrity at the core of this legal spat. The injunction could have forced a state to, within 90 days of an election, permit a non-citizen who stumbles upon the voter roll to cast a vote, seemingly overriding the pre-established state law, according to the Oklahoma government.
The response from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups is pending, but the Supreme Court's decision reaffirms the stance taken by Drummond and his colleagues on the matter of election law and the oversight of voter eligibility. The impact of this decision is expected to reverberate across states as they re-evaluate their voter rolls under this latest interpretation of the law.