VIRGINIA, USA — Reactions to the Supreme Court decision allowing Virginia to continue purging voter rolls of those marked non-citizens kept coming in on Thursday, this time from lawmakers and advocacy groups who are now working to get eligible voters re-registered with only five days until Election Day.
Records show more than 1,600 Virginians were impacted by the Supreme Court's ruling, including more than 200 here in Hampton Roads.
Groups such as the League of Women Voters of Virginia and the NAACP are now working closely with people removed from the voter rolls and are trying to re-register them.
Stephen Miller-Pitts, civic engagement director with the NAACP in Virginia, said he is worried it could depress turnout among eligible voters.
“For our low propensity voters that don’t usually come out, when they see people being dropped off the rolls sometimes, they have the deposition of, 'well, I’m not going to vote, because they control it anyway.'” Miller-Pitts said.
According to records of Virginia voter removals from the League of Women Voters of Virginia, only a handful of the more than 1,600 Virginians removed from the rolls are now re-registered to vote.
That’s why the NAACP is offering assistance.
Miller-Pitts said, “It’s very important that we stay the course and stay with our foot on the gas to continue to engage, educate and mobilize until the polls close on Tuesday.”
Thursday afternoon, U.S. senator and former Virginia governor Mark Warner offered a message to the impacted Virginians.
“This has been an incredibly tense time, and no matter who you’re voting for, it’s critical that we realize in America our democracy works, and your vote is going to count," Warner said. "But it also means there might be forces trying to interfere in our elections.”
We’ve reached out to several Virginians purged from the rolls to hear their experience, but we’ve been told it’s too sensitive of a topic to talk about right now.