These are the people filing a lawsuit against Virginia Governor, Terry McAullife to stop his restoration of voting rights to ex-offenders.
Six Virginia voters, including Howell and Norment, are asking the Supreme Court to issue writs of mandamus and prohibition to stop the implementation of the order. Link
That would be Virginia Assembly Speaker of the House William J. Howell (R-Stafford), and Senate
Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment, Jr., (R-James City).
There are about 6 million Americans who cannot vote because post-conviction restrictions prevent them from voting. We in America have a higher incarceration rate than any other country. If every state in the union were a country then the graph in this site is what the incarceration rate would look like.
In Virginia, ex-offenders are prohibited from voting for life. There is no recognition that time served counts as payment to Society. In April of 2016, Governor Terry McAuliffe used his executive powers to restore voting rights to convicted offenders. More than 200,000 people got their voting rights restored.
McAuliffe’s restoration of rights makes him the second governor to do so in Virginia in the last 10 years.
What is the statistical profile of the people whose voting rights have been restored?
About half are white, and half black. Nearly 77 percent are male. The administration says 79 percent were convicted only of non-violent crimes.
The average person's age is about 46, and their average time since release and completion of supervised release is just over 11 years, the administration said in a news release. Link.
[Interactive Charts here]
[More charts here]
McAuliffe’s restoration prompted a crying jag of an editorial in the Richmond Times Dispatch. The editorial insisted that Governor McAuliffe had violated Article 5 of the Virginia Constitution because his restoration was blanket, in that it makes no mention of the requirement in Article 5, to communicate particulars of every case to the General Assembly. But really the editorial writer was most concerned about this:
The politics are obvious as well. McAuliffe’s order has the potential to increase voting rolls in by 3.8 percent, and the strong likelihood is that most of the felons who register to vote in November will cast ballots for the Democratic nominee. That nominee is almost sure to be Hillary Clinton, a longtime friend of McAuliffe. Virginia will be a swing state in what could be a tight presidential election, so McAuliffe’s order will affect far more than just the Old Dominion. If the situation were reversed, Democrats would be screaming bloody murder — and rightly so.
Virginia Republicans are angry at Governor McAuliffe because they say he went around the Republican controlled legislature. They see it as an obvious ploy to “paint Virginia blue.”
Just to be clear, Gov. Terry McAuliffe is not the first Virginia Governor to restore voting rights to people who have served a prison term. Governor Bob McDonnell restored voting rights to 10,000 Virginians who had non-violent offence convictions, and had served the terms of their sentence. To his credit, Governor McDonnell was one of the first to act courageously in this manner. He streamlined the process, waiving the requirement that made non-violent offenders wait for two years before applying for their voting rights to be reinstated. Governor Bob McDonnell restored the rights of people like Kemba Smith.
Indeed, Virginia Republicans cannot see beyond Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, Levar Stoney is running for the office of Mayor in Richmond, Virginia. That is the gentleman standing to the left of Gov. McAuliffe during the announcement in the video, which I cannot embed:
Levar Stoney, a Richmond mayoral candidate who worked with McAuliffe to restore rights for 18,000 ex-offenders as secretary of the commonwealth, read a quote from then-legislator Carter Glass about the voting plan adopted at the 1902 convention.
“This plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than five years, so that in no single county will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government,” Stoney said as he introduced the governor. Public service, he said, is about “giving voice to the voiceless and righting the wrongs.” Link
Also, from Blue Virginia:
Former Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney: Note who was standing right next to Gov. McAuliffe today as he made history? That’s right, his long-time political aide and, until recently, Secretary of the Commonwealth (where Stoney worked hard on restoring ex-felons’ rights). I say “until recently” because Stoney stepped down at the end of last week to run for Mayor of Richmond. Already a strong favorite to win that race, standing next to Gov. McAuliffe today certainly can’t hurt. Plus, Stoney’s had an impressive campaign kickoff, with a response on social media for a local race the likes of which I can’t ever recall seeing. Huge winner.
Here again, the Republican speaker of the General Assembly complaining:
Speaker William Howell complained that “The singular purpose of Terry McAuliffe’s governorship is to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States…. This office has always been a steppingstone to a job in Hillary Clinton’s Cabinet.”
The origins of the Virginia’s voter restriction laws goes all the way back to 1902 and the Constitutional Convention with Carter Glass and cohorts.
Yes, this is the same Carter Glass of Glass Steagall, and also the same Carter Glass who said this at the 1902 convention:
Discrimination! Why that is exactly what we propose; that exactly is why this convention was elected – to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitations of the Federal Constitution with the view of the elimination of every Negro who can be gotten rid of, legally without materially impairing the strength of the white electorate. Link (or Link)
However, going further back in history before that, there was the Underwood Constitution of 1867-68. This was the first
constitution after the end of the Civil War and it was led by John C. Underwood, an abolitionist and a federal judge. And also, a progressive in that he worked to include women’s suffrage in that convention and it was rejected. Nevertheless, that convention produced a document guaranteeing the vote to all male citizens, regardless of race, as long as they were 21 years of age. This was passed with a wide margin.
Soon Redeemer Democrats began to emerge on the scene and began to replace Republican officeholders in Virginia and throughout the South.
Redeemers were a White political coalition comprised of Democratic Party affiliated, land-owning, anti-unionists, politically aggressive, states rightists, male and White dominated alliance during the era of Reconstruction. They wanted to “Redeem” the South and return to the status quo from before the war. They were focused on denying the way the war had concluded. They worked to overthrow the Republican national goals of enshrining expanded and equal political rights – for African Americans -- in the constitution:
Redeemer Democrats" was a self-imposed term used by nineteenth-century southern Democrats fond of talking about "redeeming" their states from the alleged "misrule and corruption" wrought by Republican carpetbaggers, scalawags, and their Black allies who assumed control as Congressional Reconstruction began in 1867-68. The Ku Klux Klan and similar domestic terrorist organizations played an important role in helping the Democrats reach their goal, which was done at different times between 1869 and 1877 in various southern states
The Redeemer Democrats were the ones who wanted to overturn the Underwood Constitution in Virginia. A majority of White Virginians disapproved of the newly ratified Fifteenth Amendment. There was thirty five years between the Underwood Convention and the new Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902. In that time, the Democrats, devoted to White supremacy and Whites only suffrage, amended the state constitution so that payment of poll tax became a prerequisite to voting in the hopes of disenfranchising Black voters.
However, in 1879 a coalition of Black voters, White farmers, Republicans and some Democrats became the majority in the Virginia General Assembly. They were known as the Readjuster, and they removed the poll tax as a prerequisite to voting. Many Democrats found this biracial coalition very threatening. Needless to say, the Readjusters lost votes in the next election and Democrats took control of the General Assembly. They passed the Anderson-McCormick Act with the intent of destroying the Readjuster coalition:
The law authorized the General Assembly, with its new Democratic majority, to appoint all members of electoral boards in all counties and cities. Those boards in turn appointed all local voter registrars, who kept separate lists of white and black men who were registered to vote. The boards also appointed three election judges in each precinct or ward, and those judges appointed clerks to compile the results. The Anderson-McCormick Act, in effect, gave to Democratic Party workers command of the registration of voters, the conduct of elections, and the compilation and reporting of the results.
The law led to an increase in bribery, fraud, intimidation, violence, and corruption. In precincts with large numbers of Republican and African American voters, the Democratic officials could stuff ballot boxes, lose or destroy boxes or ballots, slow down voting so much that men were left standing in line when the polls closed, and employ other techniques to steal elections. [Link}
Stealing votes became a regular election event. In the meantime, by 1890’s a large portion of Black men and thousands of White Republicans, mostly in eastern Virginia, became disenfranchised. People were calling for a new Constitutional Convention. The objective was to disenfranchise Black men so that Democrats did not have to steal and cheat at the ballot box to win.
In 1901-1902, a new convention was held. That was a clear backlash against the progressivism, which Reconstruction had tried to institute.
This convention is an example of how, in the post-Reconstruction era, the mission to disenfranchise a large part of the population because they were Black, and working class White, was the goal of many White southerners. This convention was set up to re-establish and reclaim White supremacy by White southerners. This convention reverberated in Virginia politics until 1971 and defined the Democratic Party of an era where they resisted the policies of the New Deal, and the Great Society, with special vehemence reserved for the Civil Rights Movement and the desegregation of public schools.
The history of that convention cannot be written without highlighting the actions of Carter Glass.
Carter Glass was elected to serve in the U.S. House of Rep., from the 6th District. The current occupier of that seat is Bob Goodlatt.
At the heart of the 1902 Constitutional Convention, was a discussion of “purity” of the ballot which, claimed John Goode, was endangered by the enfranchisement of Black voters during Reconstruction. Reclaiming “purity” of the ballot was the argument proffered by the Goode, the president of Virginia’s 1902 Constitutional Convention. Carter Glass, was the drafter of that constitution:
The suffrage article “does not necessarily deprive a single white man of the ballot, but will inevitably cut from the existing electorate four-fifths of the negro voters,” he told his colleagues to applause. “That was the purpose of this convention; that will be its achievement.
“Will it not be done by fraud and discrimination?” another delegate asked.
“By fraud, no; by discrimination, yes,” Glass replied. “But it will be discrimination within the letter of the law, and not in violation of the law.”
This was the Jim Crow constitution and no referendum was held for it:
The delegates chose not to submit their new constitution to Virginia voters for ratification, concluding that the electorate would not willingly choose to disenfranchise itself. Following various court challenges, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled in Taylor v. Commonwealth (1903) that the constitution had become law on July 10, 1902.
Previous Virginia constitutions also had provisions for disenfranchising for some crimes, like treason. However, the 1902 constitution expanded the notion of “crime” and added:
clause that disenfranchised Virginians convicted of numerous crimes, including “treason or of any felony, bribery, petit larceny, obtaining money or property under false pretenses, embezzlement, forgery, or perjury.”
So, what was the outcome and resounding repercussions of Virginia’s Jim Crow enhancing Constitutional Convention of 1902?
Quoting historian J. Douglas Smith in The Atlantic:
While 264,095 Virginians voted in the presidential election of 1900, only half that number, almost all of them white, bothered four years later. By the end of 1902, determined registrars and literacy tests had eliminated all but 21,000 of an estimated 147,000 blacks of voting age from the registration lists; three years later, the new poll tax cut that number in half. The electorate was so thoroughly eviscerated that throughout the first half of the twentieth century the Democratic Party regularly elected its gubernatorial candidates with the support of less than 10 percent of the adult population. From 1905 to 1948, state employees and officeholders accounted for one-third of the votes in state elections. So few Virginians voted in the first half of the twentieth century that political scientist V.O. Key quipped that “by contrast Mississippi is a hotbed of democracy.”
In anticipation of the lawsuit, Governor McAuliffe said:
“I have the legal authority and the moral authority” to take the action, McAuliffe told WTOP on Wednesday morning.
“Virginia was [until 2013] one of four states that permanently did not allow a felon to get their voting rights back unless they went through this arduous process,” he said.
“What I did was to join what 40 other states have done. … Why should Virginia be at the bottom of the heap [regarding] restoring felons’ rights?”
SNIP:
“They want fewer people to vote. I think that in the best, greatest democracy on Earth, everybody ought to have a chance to vote.
“So they can … continue to show that they want to disenfranchise voters. That’s who the Republicans are. … Maybe the Republicans should read our constitution again.”
If you listen to this video interview with Dr. William F. "Fergie" Reid, you’ll see that’s who those people have always been. That zombie ethos continues to try to take over.
Also, well worth noting, that Byrd machine Dr. Reid is referring to is this Harry F. Byrd’s organization, which:
[...] emphasized small government and a limited franchise, Byrd prioritized fiscal conservatism—a policy he pithily dubbed "pay as you go"—and, on those grounds, opposed many of fellow Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs.
When more people vote, they generally vote Democratic. The RPVA knows this. Hence, lawsuit.