Wyoming Applauds Supreme Court Ruling to Remove…

The issue of non-citizen voting in U.S. elections has been a heated debate throughout the 2024 election season, culminating on Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia can remove suspected non-citizens from its voter registration, an effort that Wyoming supported.

Both Governor Mark Gordon and Secretary of State Chuck Gray have emphasized that non-citizens are not allowed to vote in elections in America or Wyoming.

“The Supreme Court has rightly upheld Virginia’s efforts to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls,” Gray told Cowboy State Daily. “States have the authority and obligation to ensure that only citizens vote in our elections.”

In an amicus brief filed Monday with the Supreme Court, Wyoming joined 25 other states in urging the Supreme Court to allow Virginia’s removal of “self-identified noncitizens” from the voter rolls.

In the letter, Wyoming and the other states say they are “interested in preserving their constitutional authority to determine the qualifications of voters in elections and in maintaining election integrity by allowing only eligible citizens to vote.”

“The Constitution leaves decisions about the qualifications of voters up to the people of Virginia,” the letter reads. “And the people of Virginia have decided that non-residents cannot vote.”

All but one of the states that signed the order, New Hampshire, has majority Republican populations.

Gray said it was too little too late to include Wyoming in Gordon’s amicus brief. He and Gordon had a falling out earlier this year when the governor vetoed rules Gray proposed to tighten voter registration requirements at the ballot box.

“It is disappointing that Governor Gordon continues to do the bare minimum to address this issue in order to get his allies in the media to try to make people believe he is doing something about this issue, when in reality he has done nothing.” , Gray said. “The front-end protections vetoed by Governor Gordon have left Wyoming exposed and must be put in place.”

Hot Button Problem

Former President Donald Trump framed Virginia’s campaign to keep noncitizens from voting, but President Joe Biden’s administration and voting rights groups have argued that could potentially disenfranchise legal citizens.

A spokesperson for the governor said he has heard concerns from Wyoming residents about the impact the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies could have on noncitizens trying to vote.

Last Friday, a unanimous panel of judges from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Virginia’s request.

As a result of Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, approximately 1,600 people will be removed from Virginia’s voter rolls. Although these people identified themselves as noncitizens, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia argued that they had not been fully vetted for their citizenship.

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections, but are allowed to vote in local elections in certain parts of the country, except Wyoming.

Early in his administration, Biden issued an executive order to try to get more eligible voters registered to vote. The order called on federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in a manner “consistent with applicable law.”

Republican lawmakers, state election officials like Gray and other Republican activists launched claims this summer that the Biden administration was using the order to overstep the federal government’s role in elections to recruit more Democratic voters and register non-U.S. citizens, who are not legally can vote in the federal government. elections.

The Virginia case began with an order signed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in August requiring election officials to take more aggressive steps to cross-check residents who identified themselves as noncitizens with the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls and to clear those matches.

He called Wednesday’s decision a “victory for common sense and fairness in elections.”

“Clean voter rolls are an important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, counting machines that are not connected to the Internet, a strong chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secure drop boxes, and a ‘triple check’ vote counting process to tabulate the results to take.”

Wyoming corner

In September, Gordon signed an executive order directing Wyoming state agencies to prevent and report noncitizen voting.

“It seemed appropriate that the state of Wyoming would not participate in any effort to ensure ineligible voters can register,” Gordon said during a news conference earlier this month.

During the press conference, Gordon was asked if he was concerned that singling out noncitizen voters could result in legal Hispanic voters being intimidated or unwelcome to vote. Gordon dismissed these concerns.

“I don’t think we want to intimidate anyone,” Gordon said. “That’s why I encourage everyone who is here legally as a citizen to participate in the vote.”

Documented cases of non-citizens voting in the US are rare, but have been found. According to CNN, a recent audit of Georgia found 20 registered non-citizens among the 8.2 million people on its registration lists, nine of whom had voted.

Gray has repeatedly brought up the example of an alleged illegal immigrant being removed from the voter rolls in Campbell County as an example of how the issue is relevant to Wyoming.

This individual, Christian Lopez, 42, voted in the 2020 general election in Wyoming and was still registered as a Republican on the state’s voter rolls as of August 2023.

According to court documents, Lopez pleaded guilty to making a false statement to obtain a passport in 2022 and was sentenced to 60 days in jail in 2023. He had used a fraudulent birth certificate to obtain a Wyoming driver’s license and register to vote. Wyoming, and had tried to use the fake birth certificate to get a passport.

Gray’s voter rules that Gordon vetoed would have required people registering to vote in Wyoming to prove their residency if their ID didn’t already show it, but Gordon said this move exceeded the secretary of state’s legal authority Things went beyond.

“Despite Governor Gordon’s unfortunate veto, our office will do everything we can with our existing resources to ensure investigations and prosecutions for non-citizens who attempt to vote in Wyoming elections,” Gray said.

Leo Wolfson can be reached at [email protected].