The Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive ma­jor­i­ty on Wednes­day al­lowed Vir­ginia to re­sume its purge of vot­er reg­is­tra­tions that the state says is aimed at stop­ping peo­ple who are not U.S. cit­i­zens from vot­ing.

One Vir­gin­ian, whose reg­is­tra­tion was can­celed de­spite liv­ing in the state her en­tire life, called the purge “a very bad Oc­to­ber sur­prise.”

The high court, over the dis­sents of the three lib­er­al jus­tices, grant­ed an emer­gency ap­peal from Vir­ginia’s Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The court pro­vid­ed no ra­tio­nale for its ac­tion, which is typ­i­cal in emer­gency ap­peals.

The jus­tices act­ed on Vir­ginia’s ap­peal af­ter a fed­er­al judge found that the state il­le­gal­ly purged more than 1,600 vot­er reg­is­tra­tions in the past two months. A fed­er­al ap­peals court had pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed the judge’s or­der to re­main in ef­fect.

Such vot­ing is rare in Amer­i­can elec­tions, but the specter of im­mi­grants vot­ing il­le­gal­ly has been a main part of the po­lit­i­cal mes­sag­ing this year from for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and oth­er Re­pub­li­cans.

Trump had crit­i­cized the ear­li­er rul­ing, call­ing it “a to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able trav­es­ty” on so­cial me­dia. “On­ly U.S. Cit­i­zens should be al­lowed to vote,” Trump wrote.

Youngkin said vot­ers who be­lieve they were im­prop­er­ly re­moved from the rolls can still vote in the elec­tion be­cause Vir­ginia has same-day reg­is­tra­tion.

“And so there is the ul­ti­mate, ul­ti­mate safe­guard in Vir­ginia, no one is be­ing pre­clud­ed from vot­ing, and there­fore, I en­cour­age every sin­gle cit­i­zen go vote,” Youngkin told re­porters.

That op­tion was not­ed al­so by the cam­paign of Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for the White House.

“Every el­i­gi­ble vot­er has a right to cast their bal­lot and have their vote count­ed, and this rul­ing does not change that,” cam­paign spokesman Charles Lut­vak said in a state­ment. “Our cam­paign is go­ing to make sure every el­i­gi­ble vot­er is able to vote. Vot­ing by nonci­t­i­zens re­mains il­le­gal un­der fed­er­al law.”

Ri­na Shaw, 22, of Chester­field, Vir­ginia, said she was born in Vir­ginia, has lived in the state her whole life and has nev­er left the U.S.

Shaw thinks she may have for­got­ten to check a cit­i­zen­ship box on a form when she was up­dat­ing her vot­er reg­is­tra­tion at the Vir­ginia De­part­ment of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles while get­ting her learn­er’s per­mit.

“My first re­ac­tion was that that was just ridicu­lous and it shouldn’t have been al­lowed in Oc­to­ber, of all months. It should have been some­thing that hap­pened six months be­fore the elec­tion rather than right on the eve of it,” Shaw said.

She planned to cast her bal­lot dur­ing ear­ly vot­ing on Wednes­day and said she still found the er­ror trou­bling. Shaw said her vot­er reg­is­tra­tion has now been re­stored.

The Jus­tice De­part­ment and a coali­tion of pri­vate groups sued the state ear­li­er in Oc­to­ber, ar­gu­ing that Vir­ginia elec­tion of­fi­cials, act­ing on an ex­ec­u­tive or­der is­sued in Au­gust by Youngkin were strik­ing names from vot­er rolls in vi­o­la­tion of fed­er­al elec­tion law.

The Na­tion­al Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Act re­quires a 90-day “qui­et pe­ri­od” ahead of elec­tions for the main­te­nance of vot­er rolls so that le­git­i­mate vot­ers are not re­moved from the rolls by bu­reau­crat­ic er­rors or last-minute mis­takes that can­not be quick­ly cor­rect­ed.

Youngkin is­sued his or­der on Aug. 7, the 90th day be­fore the Nov. 5 elec­tion. It re­quired dai­ly checks of da­ta from the state De­part­ment of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles against vot­er rolls to iden­ti­fy peo­ple who are not U.S. cit­i­zens.

Pro­tect Democ­ra­cy, one of the groups that brought the law­suit, cit­ed me­dia in­ter­views with oth­er vot­ers as show­ing that the Youngkin ad­min­is­tra­tion’s purge has re­moved U.S. cit­i­zens from the vot­er rolls.

One ex­am­ple is Nadra Wil­son, who lives in Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia, and told NPR she got swept up in the purge. “I was born in Brook­lyn, N.Y. I’m a cit­i­zen,” Wil­son said, be­fore show­ing her Amer­i­can pass­port as proof of her cit­i­zen­ship.

Project Democ­ra­cy said in a state­ment that “this pro­gram re­moves el­i­gi­ble vot­ers. Vir­ginia has not pre­sent­ed any ev­i­dence of nonci­t­i­zens par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions. Be­cause there is none. And it’s ac­tu­al­ly el­i­gi­ble VA vot­ers that have been caught in the mid­dle of this elec­tion-sub­ver­sion scheme.”

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Pa­tri­cia Giles said elec­tions of­fi­cials still could re­move names on an in­di­vid­u­al­ized ba­sis, but not through a sys­tem­at­ic purge.

Giles had or­dered the state to no­ti­fy af­fect­ed vot­ers and lo­cal reg­is­trars by Wednes­day that the reg­is­tra­tions have been re­stored.

Near­ly 6 mil­lion Vir­gini­ans are reg­is­tered to vote.

In a sim­i­lar law­suit in Al­aba­ma, a fed­er­al judge this month or­dered the state to re­store el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for more than 3,200 vot­ers who had been deemed in­el­i­gi­ble nonci­t­i­zens. Tes­ti­mo­ny from state of­fi­cials in that case showed that rough­ly 2,000 of the 3,251 vot­ers who were made in­ac­tive were ac­tu­al­ly legal­ly reg­is­tered cit­i­zens.

WASH­ING­TON (AP)