Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order Friday restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies.
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The order will enable all felons who have served their prison time and finished parole or probation to register to vote.
“Too often in both our distant and recent history, politicians have used their authority to restrict people’s ability to participate in our democracy”, said McAuliffe, whose move circumvented the GOP-led state legislature.
Two-hundred-six thousand Virginians will newly have the right to vote this year. “Not only will these criminals have the right to vote, but they will also be serving on our juries”, Howell said in a scathing statement. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell initially made it easier for non-violent felons to vote again, but GOP leaders accuse McAuliffe of trying to build up Democratic voter roles for the November election.
Meanwhile, McAuliffe denied accusations from the right that there was political motivation and said this is an issue he strongly cares about. We need as many people as possible to vote in the upcoming election.
Before Governor McAuliffe prepared this order, he consulted with legal experts, and according to them, he had enough authority to restore voting rights in Virginia.
Howell says it’s “hard to describe how transparent the governor’s motives are”.
The governor called the instant restoration of rights to these Virginians the natural next step to his incremental streamlining of a process that has already given 18,000 nonviolent felons their rights back.
The crowd cheers during Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s announcement on the restoration of rights to felons in Virginia at the Capitol in Richmond Va., Friday, April 22, 2016. McAuliffe said parts of the state Constitution were meant to disenfranchise African-Americans, and he wanted to change that.
“Those who have paid their debts to society should be allowed full participation in society”, said the statement from John Whitbeck, Virginia’s Republican party chairman Whitbeck.
Advocates of restoring voting rights say it is a way of promoting racial justice, as African-Americans are convicted of crimes and sent to prison at about twice the rate of the overall USA population. Only two states, ME and Vermont, place no voting restrictions on felons at all (they can even vote from prison).
Across the country, state laws vary on the right to vote for ex-offenders.
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Altogether, around 2.5 percent (or 1 in 40) of Americans were disenfranchised as of 2010, according to the U.S. Sentencing Project.
