Maureen Edobor Contributes to NPR ‘Deep Dive’ Edobor contributed to a story about voter roll purges.

By Law Communications
July 3, 2026

Washington and Lee law professor Maureen Edobor was featured in a recent NPR story examining the future of a federal law that bans mass purges of voter rolls just before an election.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires election officials to end any programs for removing ineligible voters 90 days before Election Day. However, a 2024 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of the 2024 election allowed Virginia to continue removing suspected noncitizens during this so-called quiet period, a process that resulted in eligible voters being removed from the state’s list. Edobor says that the Court’s decision is causing a great deal of uncertainty heading into the midterm elections.

“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,” Edobor told NPR.

Now, the Court is set to address the scope of the quiet period in greater detail when it hears a case next term out of Arizona arguing that the quiet period does not apply to efforts to remove noncitizens. As these legal fights continue, Edobor says that voters will need to be vigilant about confirming their registration status.

“In many ways, a voter’s responsibility is really increasing in the months leading up to a federal election,” Edobor said. “Voters really have to take great responsibility to ensure their information is up to date.”

The full story is available online at the NPR website.

Edobor joined the faculty in 2023. She teaches and writes in constitutional law, election law, and democratic theory, and serves as a Theodore DeLaney Center Fellow focusing on Southern race relations, politics, and culture. Her scholarship examines how constitutional and election law doctrines influence access to democratic participation and shape collective understandings of civic identity. Her recent article in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law examined the U.S. Supreme Court case Brnovich v. Democratic National Convention, where the Court’s narrow interpretation of Section 2 of the VRA made it more difficult to challenge discriminatory voting laws.

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