Civil rights groups warn of potential voter suppression ahead of Election Day

Civil rights leaders believe that a decision handed down by the Supreme Court on Wednesday could lay the framework for post-election challenges.

The high court’s conservative majority ruled to block an order from a federal judge that would have reinstated some 1,600 individuals to Virginia’s registered voter count.

Those individuals were removed in accordance with an executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin that required the daily purge of self-identified noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls.

The Aug. 7 executive order brought lawsuits from immigration and civil rights groups, as well as the Justice Department, all of which alleged that it violated the 90-day quiet period mandated by the 1993 National Voting Rights Act.

Now that the Supreme Court’s unsigned order has allowed the purging to proceed, those advocates have implied that Virginia may very well be a canary in a coal mine, foreshadowing broader efforts aimed at undermining voting rights.

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which led one of the challenges, told ABC News, “None of this activity is random. It’s all highly orchestrated, but it’s also orchestrated with a purpose.”

“They’re trying to really test the bounds of the court’s state and federal courts appetite for actually enforcing the NVRA,” he added.

Youngkin celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision, calling it a win in the “critical fight to protect the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens.”

“Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” Youngkin said.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares called it “a win for common sense” and essential to “this idea that Virginia citizens should be deciding Virginia elections.”

Civil rights groups have argued that the focus on noncitizens voting is a false narrative.

“The idea of people who are not legal citizens voting is an absolute myth. It is not true,” said NAACP Senior Associate General Counsel Anthony P. Ashton. “It is not true.”

“This has been a theme that has been expressed now for a later narrative to try to undermine democracy, undermine faith in the democratic process,” he added.

One of the voters removed in the purge was a naturalized citizen who had voted in elections for the past 30 years, according to Ryan Snow, a litigator with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Other advocates have said that several U.S. citizens, including a Puerto Rican-born voter, were also removed.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, whose reinstatement order was blocked Wednesday by the Supreme Court, acknowledged the uncertainty of each purged voter’s actual citizenship status in her ruling, asking, “How many more are there?”

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative, senior legal fellow and former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, called the high court’s move “a significant victory for election integrity.”

“States should take this action from the Supreme Court as confirmation that they can clean up their voter rolls,” he added. “It should also signal to DOJ that they need to investigate and prosecute these aliens, not try to force Virginia or any other state to keep them registered in voter rolls in violation of federal law.”

NAACP President Derrick Johnson, however, criticized the lawsuits, calling them an effort to “undermine the public’s confidence in the entire democratic process.”

“The voter purges here are textbook examples of attempted voter suppression and intimidation,” he said. “Those behind the false allegations that saturate the commonwealth’s case seek to frighten those they consider their constituents by sounding xenophobic and racist dog whistles.”

Nationally, civil rights leaders have been signaling since 2020 that voters of color, particularly black voters, are more likely to become targets of voter challenges, especially in battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Voting Rights Project, told ABC News that voter challenges in Georgia counties such as Fulton and DeKalb, which have large Black populations, were no coincidence.

“There have been these dozens and dozens and dozens of mass voter challenge suits that were filed, and they were all filed just about the same time, around 30 days or so before the election, based upon information that even according to the pleadings they had for months and months and months before that,” Rosenberg said.

“You have to ask yourself, if this is so important for election and integrity purposes, why do they wait until the last minute?” he asked, before answering: “What they’re really playing for is supporting a new, new big lie, if they need that.”

NAACP General Counsel Janette McCarthy-Wallace told ABC News in a statement that the nation’s oldest civil rights organization is fighting for free and fair elections in 10 legal battles across the U.S.

“Make no mistake — across the country, certain state officials are trying to manufacture a legal foundation that they will use to justify false claims of election fraud during and after the election,” McCarthy-Wallace said.

She vowed to keep fighting post-election, adding, “We cannot stand idly by as the law is manipulated to help subvert democracy and silence the voices of our communities.”

Advocates warned that they were concerned about the Supreme Court ruling causing confusion as voters cast ballots in Virginia — and nationwide.

Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, warned, “The Supreme Court has injected confusion into the election. This stay will cause eligible Virginia citizens to be purged from voter rolls just before the election — all in service of a conspiracy theory.”

However, for the first time in a presidential election, Virginia voters can do same-day registration through Nov. 5. This means that voters who believe that they were improperly removed would be able to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.

Even Youngkin endorsed the approach.

“We do have the ultimate safeguard, which is you can come day of, and you can register same day and cast a provisional ballot,” the governor said. “And therefore no one is being precluded from voting who is a citizen in the United States and in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

T. Michelle Murphy contributed to this report.