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- The U.S. Supreme Court is addressing significant election-related cases before Nov. 5.
- Virginia's voter roll purge was upheld, removing 1,600 noncitizens despite controversy.
- The court declined to remove RFK Jr. from ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.
SALT LAKE CITY — All eyes may be on political campaigns making their midnight pitches as U.S. voters cast ballots in the 2024 election, but there's another area of government where election decisions are playing out — the courts.
A state's efforts seeking to purge voter rolls of noncitizens has been met with lawsuits. A presidential candidate who suspended his campaign and tried to get off the ballot in two battleground campaigns faced legal challenges, too. The U.S. Supreme Court has waded into these issues, and it remains to be seen how they will deal with other election matters.
The courts can be a little wary of stepping into election issues, especially right on the eve of an election. So, it's interesting to see which cases the Supreme Court decides to take a look at and which it doesn't.
Lyman's request to the Supreme Court
Utah write-in candidate Phil Lyman, who lost the Republican gubernatorial primary to Gov. Spencer Cox, has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Utah Supreme Court dismissed his original petition.
Lyman had requested the Utah Supreme Court toss out the results of the Republican primary and remove Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson from office. He filed the petition himself and said he should have been advanced as the Republican nominee to the general election ballot.
The Utah Supreme Court denied his petition.
"Mr. Lyman cites no authority to support his assertion that a political party's internal rules override state election law," said the order. "And he overlooks that we reached the opposite conclusion in Utah Republican Party v. Cox." There, the court said, it concluded that if the Utah Republican Party wishes to remain a qualified political party, it has to follow statutory requirements.
After Lyman appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, conservative political attorney Audrey Perry said she would be "baffled" if the Supreme Court took up the case.
Virginia voter rolls
In a victory for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the country's highest court on Wednesday allowed the state's program aimed at removing noncitizens from the voter rolls to move forward.
The one-page order issued from the court simply states the decision and says 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," said Youngkin in a statement celebrating the court's decision, adding 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 that they have adequate time to address errors and understand their rights." The suit said Virginia likely removed U.S. citizens from its rolls. The state said voters removed from the rolls either identified themselves as noncitizens or were identified as noncitizens.
The Virginia governor signed an executive order in August to remove people from the statewide voter registration list who were unable to verify they are citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles among other measures directed at increasing election security. It directs the Department of Elections to look at the list of people identified as noncitizens and see if they are on the voter rolls.
The Department of Elections is then supposed to notify those individuals and give them 14 days to affirm their citizenship.
Virginia removed around 1,600 people from its voter rolls.
Court documents from the state say around 600 of these people told the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles they are not citizens, and around 1,000 gave noncitizen residency documents to the DMV (and then were identified as noncitizens by a U.S. database).
The district court, which ruled before the Supreme Court, said there was evidence of eligible citizens having their voter registrations canceled without their knowledge. In a filing from the U.S. solicitor general, this decision of the district court was referenced. And the filing claimed a provision of voter registration law was violated.
Utah joined an amicus brief led by Kansas in support of Virginia.
"We applaud the Supreme Court decision to reinforce the power of states to properly regulate elections and keep them fair and free of fraud or foreign influence," said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes in a statement. "Every one of the registered voters in Virginia who were removed from the voting list indicated they were not citizens on their DMV records within the previous year. Before removing those individuals, several steps were taken to verify each person was not an eligible voter."
The brief said the 26 states were "interested in preserving their constitutional authority to determine voter qualifications in elections and in maintaining election integrity by allowing only eligible citizens to vote." The states said since the district court ordered Virginia to put back these voters on the rolls, noncitizens would potentially be allowed to vote in the election.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee celebrated the Supreme Court's decision. He's the author of a bill known as the SAVE Act (the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act), which would require proof of identification to vote in federal elections and give states the ability to verify citizenship using federal databases.
"Excellent news for election integrity," said Lee in a social media post. "Only Americans should vote in American elections."
The Pennsylvania case
The Republican National Committee filed a petition for emergency relief from the Supreme Court Monday, asking it to put on hold a decision.
Last week's decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court resulted in election officials being ordered to count provisional ballots from voters whose mailed ballot was rejected.
The RNC argued this effectively created a cure process for mail-ballot errors that Pennsylvania lawmakers did not create. The case concentrates on Butler County.
"Undeterred, the majority below held that election officials must count a provisional ballot cast by an individual whose mail ballot was timely received but could not be counted because it violated a mandatory rule, such as lack of signature, date, or secrecy envelope," said lawyers for the RNC in the petition.
The petition said Pennsylvania crossed a line.
"When the legislature says that certain ballot can never be counted, a state court cannot blue-pencil that clear command into always," said the filing. It said this case mattered so much because it could impact who controls the Senate or even who wins the presidency.
The case originated after two Pennsylvanians sued. Their mail ballots were rejected because they were not returned in secrecy envelopes. They were advised to cast provisional ballots, but then the county board of elections rejected those ballots, which led the pair to sue.
After the case made it up to the state's highest court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 4-3 their ballots should be counted.
"Following the commands of the election code as interpreted by this court, the board properly disregarded electors' mail-in ballots as void," said the court. "However, it erred in refusing to count electors' provisional ballots."
The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't weighed in at this point.
Supreme Court declines to remove RFK Jr. from ballot in two states
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate for president who suspended his candidate and has 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, which means his name will be still on the ballot in those battleground states.
Both decisions were not signed and simply contained the order — no reasoning was explained. There was only one dissent in either order: Justice Neil Gorsuch said he was dissenting in the Michigan case.
The states had argued ballots were already out, and voting was underway, so he couldn't be removed from the ballot.
After the Supreme Court decision was issued, Kennedy said on social media that it was "a purely political move in the hope that folks who would have otherwise voted for Trump will throw away their vote by voting for me instead."
