By Zamone Perez Virginia News Connection
Virginia is the only state in the nation that requires people with a felony to individually petition the governor to restore their voting rights. In November, Virginians may take that power out of the governor’s hands altogether.
Commonwealth lawmakers have put a constitutional amendment before voters asking whether to fully restore voting rights for people with felonies once they are released from prison. Virginia revokes the voting rights of any person with a felony conviction, and once a person is released from prison, he or she must go through a petition and review process for the chance to regain the right to vote.
Nicole Porter, senior director of advocacy at the Sentencing Project, said it’s encouraging to see the amendment pass twice through the General Assembly.
“It would be significant,” she said. “Virginians and national partners have been working for decades to get this constitutional amendment passed, and it was good steps in the right direction that Virginia lawmakers passed the measures that will now put the question on the ballot this fall.”
Former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin ended the practice of automatically restoring the voting rights of all people with non-violent felony convictions. Under the current system, the process is now a case-by-case basis, resulting in a decline in the number of people whose voting rights are restored each year.
Porter said it is a fundamental democratic right for all people, no matter their history with the law, to take part in civic life.
“Even when completing a felony sentence, these are individuals that don’t lose their right to citizenship,” she said. “They retain that right, and them being able to vote and participate in democracy, and making choices about who governs them is important.”
More than 230,000 formerly incarcerated Virginians lack the right to vote, according to the Sentencing Project, with an outsized impact on Black voters. Nearly one in ten Black Virginians do not have the right to vote because of a felony conviction.
