FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — Phoebe Taylor was ready to vote in Tuesday’s election. She even knew the number of her precinct in the city of Richmond off the top of her head.

So it came as a shock when a reporter informed the naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from the United Kingdom, that she, along with about 1,600 others, had been removed from Virginia’s rolls in the last two months to prevent non-representation -Citizens cast their vote.

“It irritates me,” said Taylor, 26. “I wouldn’t even have known.”

Taylor is among 1,600 people whose voter status remained unclear until Wednesday, when the U.S. Supreme Court said Virginia could move forward with its original plan to remove those voters from the voter rolls.

Last week, a federal judge and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Virginia to restore voter registrations. They ruled that Virginia had unlawfully removed voters from the voter rolls during a 90-day pre-election quiet period, required by federal law to ensure that last-minute errors did not wrongly disenfranchise voters like Taylor.

In Taylor’s case, she suspected the error was because she didn’t yet have citizenship when she first applied for a driver’s license in Virginia as a teenager. But she said she has been a citizen for several years.

She also acknowledged that she did not regularly check her mail and easily overlooked letters from the city elections office informing her of her recall and options for correction.

Another Richmond voter, 66-year-old Eric Terrell, said his voter registration was mistakenly canceled. He said he found out about the problem because he called the election office to inquire about the status of his absentee ballot application, and after a few calls, they told him he had been removed from the voter rolls.

The elections office told Terrell he could go to the polls on Tuesday and vote through Virginia’s same-day registration process. The vote will be a provisional vote, but Virginia officials have said 98% of provisional ballots will be included in the final count.

As a result, Terrell said he wasn’t particularly concerned about the mishap, which he said stemmed from checking the wrong box about his citizenship in a DMV transaction.

“As long as I can vote, it’s over for me,” he said in a telephone interview.

It is not clear how many of the 1,600 registrations in question involved citizens who should have been on the register. Advocacy groups and media organizations have often found anecdotal evidence of citizens whose registrations were erroneously deleted.

A review of just a small sample of the names on the list by The Associated Press found people who both said they were wrongfully removed and people who confirmed they were not citizens and should not have been registered.

As a practical matter, anyone whose registration has been canceled will have the opportunity to register the same day, either on Election Day or during early voting, which ends Saturday. Those who register must confirm citizenship, but are not required to provide proof of citizenship.

Thalia Simpson, spokeswoman for the Prince William County elections office, said eligible voters affected by the removals should take advantage of the same-day registration process, which voters of all stripes did in large numbers during early voting.

It’s unclear whether the issue will have any real impact in Virginia. The 1,600 registrations represent less than 0.03% of the state’s 6 million registered voters.

“We’re not sure this will have much of an impact,” said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “It was a little concerning because there was strong evidence that at least some citizens were marked on that list. But then again, Virginia also has same-day voter registration.”

Analysts say Vice President Kamala Harris leads Virginia by a comfortable margin over former President Donald Trump. While the state was considered a battleground as recently as 2012, the commonwealth has trended Democratic over the past decade. According to polls, incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine has an even larger lead over his Republican opponent.

It is also a state where the former president underperformed. Trump lost to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to President Joe Biden in 2020.

Nevertheless, Trump has not given up. He has a campaign stop scheduled for Saturday in Salem, Virginia, a day after campaigning in New Mexico, another state not considered a major battleground.

“We have a real chance,” Trump said while calling a rally in the Richmond area on Saturday. “We are almost neck and neck in the polls.”

Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Virginia Democratic Party, said Trump’s visit to Salem would only increase Harris’ lead.

“Kamala Harris will win Virginia convincingly, as he knows, and any visit from this crazy lunatic will only increase the margin,” she said.

In any case, not every voter who was wrongly eliminated was enthusiastic about casting their vote. One of those voters — Abdullah Al Mosawa of Alexandria, who became a citizen about five years ago — admitted he was unlikely to vote in the presidential election this year.

“With the options we have now, if I tried again, I would vote third party,” he said.

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Diaz reported from Arlington, Virginia. Associated Press writer Christine Fernando reported from Chicago.