RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) – The U.S. Supreme Court may soon weigh in on the legal battle involving voter registration here in Virginia.

The state asked the nation’s highest court for an emergency stay after a federal appeals court upheld a judge’s order to restore the records of 1,600 people.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin defended the process that removed registered voters who self-identified as non-citizens on DMV forms.

“This is right and it’s common sense and it’s constitutionally right,” Youngkin told WDBJ7 on Friday.

He said he would also make sure that anyone who believes they are qualified has the opportunity to vote provisionally on Election Day.

But groups focused on protecting voting rights say there is little evidence of voter fraud by non-citizens in Virginia. And they say they have documented examples of American citizens who are eligible to vote who have been removed from the rolls.

Their lawyers have argued that the process the state has undertaken is a systematic purge prohibited so close to an election.

“I’ve talked to voters who have been removed and who have voted for 30 years and have never had their registration revoked through this program,” Ryan Snow with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said during a press conference past. Wednesday.

WDBJ7 political analyst Bob Denton notes that the legal issue has also become a major political issue.

“For Republicans, this demonstrates another reason why they really need to deal with illegal immigration, as well as the reason to worry about voter fraud,” Denton said. “But for Democrats it serves as a reminder that here the Republicans go again trying to suppress the vote, so this has become kind of a political basketball, if you will, here late in the election process.”

In its Supreme Court filing, the Attorney General’s Office argued that the process of state removal is not systematic and is not illegal.

The state is asking the court for a decision by Wednesday, likely to give election officials enough time to implement the ruling.

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