Va. Gov. Youngkin restores voting rights to thousands of ex-felons

In most states, convicted felons mechanically regain the suitable to vote upon the completion of their sentences. Virginia is one among 11 that completely strip residents of the suitable to vote upon conviction of a felony, in accordance with the Nationwide Convention of State Legislatures. Felons right here additionally lose the suitable to own a firearm, maintain public workplace, serve on a jury or as a notary.

However the Virginia Structure offers the governor the facility to revive most of these rights as soon as a felon has accomplished his or her sentence. The one exception is firearms rights, which solely a Circuit Court docket choose can restore.

Virginia governors of each events have taken steps over the previous decade to make it simpler for felons to regain the suitable to vote, beginning with Republican Robert F. McDonnell, a former prosecutor who championed the trigger as an ethical challenge, and drastically selecting up pace below Democrats Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam.

McDonnell intervened in a number of thousand circumstances earlier than leaving workplace in 2014. McAuliffe restored voting and different civil rights to about 173,000 felons. Northam did so for greater than 111,000 former prisoners and championed a proposed constitutional modification that might have mechanically restored voting rights for felons upon completion of their incarceration.

The measure handed the Normal Meeting final 12 months, when Democrats managed the state Home and Senate, but it surely hit a roadblock as soon as Republicans took management of the Home in January.

To amend the structure, the legislature should cross laws two years in a row — with an election in between — after which win approval from voters in a referendum. The measure died in a Republican-controlled Home committee this 12 months, regardless of bipartisan assist.

Youngkin’s motion to revive rights presents a softer picture of the brand new governor, who careworn law-and-order themes throughout his marketing campaign final 12 months in opposition to McAuliffe, who was looking for a comeback. Youngkin sharply criticized Northam for the state Parole Board’s resolution, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, to launch some growing older violent offenders, together with a person who’d served many years for killing a Richmond police officer.

“The restoration of rights course of gives a recent step ahead for people who’ve made errors, however have achieved their obligation to our neighborhood and want to be full and productive residents of our Commonwealth,” Kay Coles James, who handles rights restoration requests as Youngkin’s secretary of the commonwealth, mentioned in a written assertion. “I look ahead to their profitable futures.”

The administration will restore rights “on an ongoing foundation,” in accordance with the announcement from Youngkin’s workplace, which invited ex-felons looking for to have their rights restored to go to www.restore.virginia.gov.