(Official editorial of the Washington Examiner Oct. 30. NOTE: Hours after this editorial was published, the Supreme Court did exactly as the editorial board suggested.)
The Supreme Court should decide immediately to allow Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) to take the logical and lawful step of removing some 1,600 noncitizens from Virginia’s voting rolls.
On Aug. 7, Youngkin signed Executive Order 35, which, among a series of other basic election procedures, includes what should be an unexceptional requirement to strip from the voting lists anyone who identified themselves as noncitizens when filling out forms for the Department of Motor Vehicles. Repeat: self-identified noncitizens.
It is indisputable that Virginia law does not allow noncitizens to vote. It is indisputable that the Justice Department, in 2006, precleared the Virginia law that provides for election officials to remove ineligible voters from the rolls as part of “daily maintenance” of registrations. That law was signed by Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, who later became his party’s nominee for vice president and still is a U.S. senator. The only substantive distinction in Youngkin’s order is to specify that county registrars should now use DMV information to help them with that task. This is a thoroughly unremarkable exercise of due diligence: If somebody has identified himself as a noncitizen, registrars should make sure he isn’t allowed to vote.
“I voted” stickers in English and Spanish, Virginia, USA, November 2014. (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) photo.)
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is obsessively in favor of making it easy for cheaters to vote. All across the nation, it is intervening to block or suspend state officials’ sensible, good-faith efforts to maintain voting integrity. In Virginia, the department sued to block Youngkin’s executive order by claiming it violates a part of the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits states from “systematic” efforts to take names off voter lists within 90 days of an election. Alas, a federal district judge and three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, all appointees of Presidents Barack Obama and Biden, ruled in favor of Biden’s motion, against Virginia.
The judges are engaging in sophistry. Youngkin and state officials are not perpetrating a “systematic” voter purge. Instead, they are using ordinary efforts to apply the law on an individual basis. The name removal is predicated on each resident’s self-identification on a state form…. [The full editorial is at this link.]
