Virginia’s governor is restoring voting rights for 200,000 convicted felony offenders ahead of the November election.
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The swing state of Virginia could see an increase of more than 200,000 voters in the wake of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive order to restore voting rights to convicted felons. Under McAuliffe’s new order, felons convicted of both violent and non-violent crimes will be able to vote so long as they have carried out their sentences.
Such policies make black Americans of voting age four times more likely to lose their voting rights than the rest of the adult population, disenfranchising one of every 13 African-American adults nationwide, but Virginia is even more punishing. But Republicans are suggesting McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton supporter, went too far by including violent criminals and that his move is a “transparent effort to win votes”. “You will have child pornographers, human traffickers, robbers, rapists, murderers eligible to sit on juries and hear criminal cases of people who commit similar crimes”, said Robert B. Bell, a Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General.
Altogether, around 2.5 percent (or 1 in 40) of Americans were disenfranchised as of 2010, according to the U.S. Sentencing Project.
Undoubtedly alarmed by that prospect, Virginia’s Republican Party immediately resorted to scaremongering on social media.
University of Virginia law professor A. E. Dick Howard advised McAuliffe on using his authority to restore voting rights. “There certainly is no legal, nor moral basis for doing so”. Virginia has some of the most stringent restrictions on ex-felons voting of any state, with most effectively barred for life.
The move impacts 206,000 felons who have served their time, according to McAullife.
“I have long struggled with the question of whether Virginia can fully address Lincoln’s call for a government by the people, of the people, and for the people, when we cut out so many people from full citizenship”, he said. “This office has always been a stepping stone to a job in Hillary Clinton’s Cabinet”.
McAuliffe’s re-enfranchisement of convicted felons won’t happen right away, and it won’t be the new rule going forward. We firmly believe in second chances and that citizens who have completed their sentences be allowed to exercise the constitutional right to vote.
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Given under my hand and under the Lesser Seal of the Commonwealth at Richmond, on April 22, 2016 in the 240th year of the Commonwealth. In Iowa, felons permanently lose their right to vote, while Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida offer restoration of voting rights by executive order.
