State attorney general Andrea Campbell is firmly on the side of the law. At least the laws she agrees with.

As the Herald reported, Campbell is facing fallout for not supporting Virginia’s successful effort to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.

Paul Diego Craney, spokesman for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, blasted the AG for not backing Virginia in this move. He accused the attorney general of being a “friend” of the Biden-Harris Administration who doesn’t “stand up” for Bay State residents.

“Non-citizens should not vote in elections and they should not be registered voters,” Craney said in a statement. “There are some who believe they should. Andrea Campbell should break her silence on this matter and protect the integrity of our voter rolls by signing onto the amicus.”

Campbell made her views on non-citizen voting known when she was Boston City Council president in 2018.

“I want to have conversations about how noncitizens can fully participate and come out of the shadows to do so,” Campbell said then. “These residents generate millions in taxes coming from folks who are identified as undocumented, DACA, legal permanent residents as well as having green cards.”

But, as the law stands, non-citizens can’t vote in presidential and federal elections.

Though silent on Virginia’s voting roll move, Campbell was strongly pro-compliance earlier this year when Milton residents overturned a state-mandated zoning plan.

“I’m disappointed that a select group of Milton residents chose to be part of the problem rather than the solution to our housing affordability crisis,” Campbell posted on X. “My office has made it clear that compliance with the law is mandatory.”

Virginia’s move was prompted by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s August order requiring election officials to take more aggressive steps to match residents who self-identified as noncitizens at the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls and to purge those matches, as CNN reported.

After the Supreme Court backed the move, Youngkin called the High Court’s action a “victory for common sense and election fairness.”

He’s right. As the US Department of Homeland Security estimates some 11 million illegal migrants living in the US as of January 2022, it would be foolish not to ensure that these non-citizens aren’t voting illegally.

To be fair, it’s not just Andrea Campbell who sat this one out.

Twenty-six Republican attorneys general filed an amicus brief backing Virginia, (representing Kansas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.)

But there are a lot more than 26 state AGs in the country. Where were their Democratic colleagues?

Their silence speaks volumes.

Perhaps in the future, non-citizens will be allowed to vote in Massachusetts’ municipal elections — a House bill introduced by Cambridge Rep. Mike Connolly is in the State Legislature. Should that bill become law, the state would be expected to follow it.

Just as states must now comply with voting laws restricting the casting of ballots to citizens. Whether their AGs like it or not.

Editorial cartoon by Joe Heller (Joe Heller)