Virginia’s state constitution bars people with felony convictions from casting a ballot “unless his civil rights have been restored by the Governor or other appropriate authority”.
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Republicans are losing their minds over Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe restoring the voting rights of 206,000 Virginians who were convicted of felonies, but served their time and completed any release or probationary requirements.
The Democratic governor has made restoring rights – including the right to vote, the right to hold public office, and the right to serve on a jury – a top priority. Last December, newly elected Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) reversed an executive order by his Democratic predecessor to grant voting rights to ex-felons in the state once they had completed their sentences.
“This will be the single most significant action on disenfranchisement that we’ve ever seen from a governor, and it’s noteworthy that it’s coming in the middle of this term, not the day before he leaves office”, Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, told the New York Times. Most are African-Americans, a core constituency of Democrats, Mr. McAuliffe’s political party.
“We have long known that laws that disenfranchise voters based on prior mistakes have a disparate impact on communities of color who have been historically targeted by our nation’s broken system of incarceration”, she said.
McAuliffe led Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and has been a long-time Clinton ally.
“Gov. McAuliffe could easily have excluded those who have committed heinous acts of violence from this order, yet he chose not to”, said Republican Party of Virginia chairman John Whitbeck. To deprive them of the right to vote is to argue for permanent punishment, and deny citizens the opportunity to make amends for breaking the law.
The freak out is on all over conservative media, because Republicans assume that all convicted felons will automatically vote for Hillary Clinton.
As a result, the Sentencing Project estimated in 2012 that more than 5.8 million Americans weren’t legally allowed to vote due to their criminal records – more than the population of either Colorado or SC. The decision could face legal challenges, though McAuliffe expressed confidence in his legal authority to issue the order. “There certainly is no legal, nor moral basis for doing so”.
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Before Friday’s order, McAuliffe’s administration had restored the rights of more than 18,000 felons – more, they said, than the past seven governors combined.
