The election cases playing out in the Supreme Court before Nov. 5

All eyes may be on political campaigns making their midnight pitches as American voters cast their ballots in the 2024 election, but there’s another part of government where election decisions come into play: the courts.

A state’s attempts to purge its voter rolls of non-citizens have been met with lawsuits. A presidential candidate who suspended his campaign and tried to get out of the vote in two battleground campaigns also faced legal challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed these issues and it remains to be seen how they will handle other election issues.

The courts can be a little reluctant to get involved in election issues, especially on the eve of an election. So it will be interesting to see which cases the Supreme Court decides to investigate and which not.

Voter role in Virginia

In a victory for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the nation’s highest court on Wednesday authorized the state’s program aimed at removing noncitizens from voter rolls.

The one-page order issued by the court simply states the decision and says that Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would deny the state’s application.

“Clean voter rolls are an important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” Youngkin said in a statement statement celebrating the court’s decision, adding that Virginians can know the state’s elections are “fair, secure and free from politically motivated interference.”

The Justice Department had sued the state over Virginia’s move, claiming it would “disenfranchise, confuse, or deter voters by ensuring they have adequate time to address errors and understand their rights.” ” According to the lawsuit, Virginia likely purged U.S. citizens from the rolls. The state said voters who were removed from the rolls identified themselves as noncitizens or were identified as noncitizens.

Virginia’s governor signed an executive order in August to remove people from the statewide voter registration list who could not verify they are citizens at the Department of Motor Vehicles, among other measures aimed at increasing election security. It directs the Department of Elections to look at the list of people identified as non-citizens and see if they are on the voter list.

The Ministry of Elections is then supposed to notify these individuals and give them fourteen days to confirm their citizenship.

Virginia removed about 1,600 people from the voter rolls.

According to state court documents, about 600 of these people told the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not citizens and about 1,000 gave non-citizenship documents to the DMV (and were subsequently identified as non-citizens by a U.S. database).

The district court, ruling for the Supreme Court, said there was evidence that the voter registrations of eligible citizens were canceled without their knowledge. This district court decision was referenced in a filing by the U.S. Solicitor General. And the filing alleged that a provision of the voter registration law had been violated.

Utah joined an amicus brief led by Kansas in support of Virginia. Utah’s attorney general declined to comment when the Deseret News requested a statement.

The letter said the 26 states were “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 states said that since the district court ordered Virginia to reinstate these electors, noncitizens might be allowed to vote in the election.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision. He is the author of a bill known as the SAVE Act (the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act), which requires proof of identity to vote in federal elections and allows states to verify citizenship using federal databases).

“Excellent news for election integrity,” Lee said a message on social media. “Only Americans should vote in American elections.”

The Pennsylvania Case

The Republican National Committee filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Monday, asking for a decision to be put on hold.

Last week’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision ordered election officials to count the provisional ballots of voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.

The RNC argued that this essentially created a cure for mail-in voting errors that Pennsylvania lawmakers failed to create. The case focuses on Butler County.

“The majority of us were undeterred and believed that the election officials did so must count a provisional ballot cast by an individual whose mail ballot was received on time but could not be counted because it violated a mandatory rule, such as lacking a signature, date, or secrecy envelope,” attorneys for the RNC said in the petition.

According to the petition, Pennsylvania has crossed a line.

“If the legislature says that certain votes are possible never Count that, and a state court can’t blue-pencil that clear order always,the filing said. It said this case matters so much because it could affect who controls the Senate or even who wins the presidency.

The case arose after two Pennsylvanians filed a lawsuit. Their mail-in ballots were rejected because they were not returned in secrecy envelopes. They were advised to cast provisional ballots, but then the county elections board rejected those ballots, leading the couple to file a lawsuit.

After the case reached the state’s highest court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that their ballots should be counted.

“Under the provisions of the Election Code, as interpreted by this court, the board properly deemed voters’ mail-in ballots to be invalid,” the court said. “However, it made a mistake by refusing to count voters’ provisional ballots.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled.

The Supreme Court denies RFK Jr. from the ballot in two states

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate who has suspended his candidacy and endorsed former President Donald Trump, had filed emergency petitions to get off the ballot in Wisconsin and Michigan.

The Supreme Court declined to do so, meaning his name will still be on the ballot in those battleground states.

Both decisions were unsigned and simply contained the order – no reasoning was given. There was only one dissent in both orders: Justice Neil Gorsuch said he disagreed with the Michigan case.

The states had argued that the ballots were already out and voting was underway, so he couldn’t be removed from the ballot.

After the Supreme Court ruling was issued, Kennedy continued social media that it was “a purely political move in the hope that people who would otherwise have voted for Trump will throw away their vote by voting for me instead.”

Lyman’s petition to the Supreme Court

Utah write-in candidate Phil Lyman, who lost the Republican gubernatorial primary to Gov. Spencer Cox, has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Utah Supreme Court denied his original request.

Lyman had asked the Utah Supreme Court to throw out the results of the Republican primary and remove Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson from office. He filed the petition himself, saying he should have been nominated as a Republican candidate for the general election.

The Utah Supreme Court denied his request.

“Mr. Lyman cites no authority to support his claim that a political party’s internal rules override state election law,” the order said. “And he overlooks the fact that we came to the opposite conclusion in Utah Republican Party v. Cox.” There, the court concluded that if the Republican Party of Utah wants to remain a qualified political party, it must meet legal requirements.

After Lyman appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, conservative political attorney Audrey Perry said she would be “stunned” if the Supreme Court took up the case.