CHANG: Well, this decision from the Supreme Court comes less than a week from Election Day. What do legal experts say about the timing of all of this?

JOFFE-BLOCK: Yeah, well, so there’s no written decision from the Supreme Court, so it’s a little bit murky how to even interpret it. But I spoke with University of Baltimore law professor Kim Wehle. She said, given that this was happening on the shadow docket and that two lower courts had already ruled against Virginia, that it’s hard not to see this action by the Supreme Court as political and ideological.

And I also spoke with Nate Persily. He’s an election law expert at Stanford Law School. He said he was somewhat surprised. He says the fact that the court got involved on a case like this at the last minute means they don’t plan to be sitting on the sidelines. It shows they’re willing to be involved in some of the minutia of running an election. And we know a lot of litigation is headed their way this election season.

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