Even former/two-term Virginia Lt. Governor Bill Bolling, a Trump-supporting Republican, understands that Youngkin’s and Miyares’ obviously illegal efforts to purge voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election is “in violation of federal law” and that “the Supreme Court will reject this appeal (or refuse to hear it).” Of course, as a commenter on Twitter noted, “‘I know facts can be troubling things,’ says the guy who ignored facts to vote for Trump because ‘policy’.” So…nope, Bolling has zero self-awareness or internal consistency, but he’s right about this (other than the fact that he disagrees with the federal law).
No issue in recent Virginia politics has been as politicized as this issue has been.
My prediction is that the Supreme Court will reject this appeal (or refuse to hear it). Why? Because what Virginia has been doing since early August does appear to be in violation of federal law.
I know that facts can be troubling things, but I try and report the facts, and here are the facts as I understand them.
Virginia has a state law that requires the Department of Elections to periodically remove from state voter rolls those voters who are no longer eligible to vote in Virginia. These voter roll purges could be due to death, a change in residence, a change in legal status, etc.
Let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with Virginia’s law. In fact, every other state has a similar law, and they should have. No one who is not legally eligible to vote should be on our voter rolls.
However, there is a federal law that has been in place for more than 30 years that requires these types of state based voter roll purges to cease 90 days prior to any federal election.
In this case, Virginia continued implementing its voter roll purges via Executive Order well inside the 90 day window. That is what prompted the federal lawsuit that seeks to stop Virginia’s ongoing voter roll purges and restore the voting rights of any voters that were purged inside the 90 day window.
The primary target of Virginia’s ongoing voter roll purges seems to be a subset of registered voters who did not specifically check on their voter registration application that they were U.S. citizens. Virginia argues that such purges are not covered by the federal law.
So far, a federal trial court, and a federal court of appeals, have ruled against Virginia. They basically said that the federal law applies to all voter roll purges, and that Virginia should have complied with federal law and stopped the purge of voter rolls 90 days prior to the election.
You may or may not agree with the federal law (I do NOT agree with it), but you can’t just ignore it. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution has long held that federal law takes precedence over state law.
It is certainly OK to debate issues like this, but we should be intellectually honest when we do so. There is a reason why Virginia has lost, and will probably continue to lose, these cases.
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