Republicans are mounting a push for courts to reinterpret a longstanding ban on mass purges of voter rolls just before a federal election.That legal protection for eligible voters is now set to be reviewed by the Supreme Court during its upcoming term, beginning in October, through a case out of Arizona, as President Trump and GOP leaders continue to spread false claims of widespread voter fraud by non-U.S.citizens, even as state reviews have found illegal voting by noncitizens to be incredibly rare.Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, election officials are supposed to finish any program for systematically removing ineligible voters 90 days before Election Day in federal races.
That deadline applies to the 44 states covered by the NVRA, plus Washington, D.C.Congress passed this ban on late mass purges to make sure any eligible voters who mistakenly get caught up in a purge have enough time to resolve issues and cast their ballots.But as this fall's midterm election draws closer, some legal experts are questioning how courts will enforce what's known as the 90-day "quiet period" that's set to begin Aug.5.Much of that uncertainty is the result of a brief, unexplained ruling the Supreme Court's conservative majority made before the 2024 election, allowing a Virginia program for removing suspected noncitizens to continue during that year's quiet period."It's absolutely playing a huge role," says Maureen Edobor, an assistant law professor at Washington and Lee University.
"There's no doubt in my mind that litigators and voting rights advocates and state officials are really testing the limits of the NVRA's quiet period protection."In several ongoing cases, the Trump administration and Republican state officials have lined up legal arguments that call for allowing more aggressive reviews of state lists for ineligible voters.On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to the Republican National Committee's request to take up an Arizona-based case that could narrow...