Terry McAuliffe has again restored the voting rights of about 13,000 felons after his previous attempt was blocked by the state Supreme Court, the Democrat said Monday.
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The ruling said the governor could restore those rights only on a case-by-case basis and that his blanket orders allowing so many felons to participate in elections violated the Virginia Constitution.
Republicans are ready to make the case that McAuliffe is trying to rig the election, an argument that fits into a narrative Trump has been pushing about the election for weeks.
The Supreme Court agreed and ordered the names of the felons who had registered to vote to be stripped from voter rolls.
McAuliffe made the announcement Monday in Richmond, saying he will comply with the court order and restore the rights of ex-offenders on a case-by-case basis.
“By the end of this week, I will have restored the rights of all 13,000!” On Friday came the first hint, with the release of McAuliffe’s official schedule.
“Had the Governor followed the Constitution of Virginia on April 22 when he initially attempted this, those affected by today’s announcement might not have endured the roller-coaster of bureaucratic incompetence his executive overreach exposed”, Norment said.
A McAuliffe spokeswoman, Christina Nuckols, declined to provide more information.
In April, the Virginia Governor issued a sweeping order restoring rights to all ex-offenders who are no longer incarcerated or on probation or parole. There are also further plans in place to ultimately restore the right to vote for at least 200,000 felons. Following the July court ruling, McAuliffe had promised to “expeditiously sign” the orders for those 13,000 and said he’d work to sign them for the other 200,00 as well.
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Said Norment: “I sincerely hope the administration has taken greater care in issuing these case-by case restoration orders than it demonstrated over the last four months”. “People who have redeemed themselves – they should not continue to be marked people”. Virginia is among three states where more than one in five black adults have lost their voting rights, the group says. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows Clinton leading in the state, 50-38.
