In a blow to voting rights, the Virginia Supreme Court blocked Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe from automatically restoring the voting rights of felons who have completed their sentences. Virginia is one of just four states that effectively imposes a lifetime ban on most felons from voting, even post-sentencing. Previously, Virginians had to go through a lengthy appeal to the governor to have their voting rights restored, but McAuliffe recently issued a sweeping executive order to streamline the process for roughly 206,000 felons who had fully served their time and weren’t on parole or probation.
In a four-to-three ruling, Virginia’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court held that McAuliffe lacked the authority to issue a blanket order when the process had previously been handled on a case-by-case basis. McAuliffe swiftly responded with a statement that his office would begin issuing individual clemency orders restoring voting rights for the roughly 13,000 felons who had recently registered to vote and eventually all 206,000 individuals. Republican legislators are likely to oppose this move in court just like they did with the original executive order.
Despite all the focus on issues like voter I.D., felon disenfranchisement is one of the least-appreciated forms of voter suppression in this country. According to the Sentencing Project, nearly six million Americans are barred from voting, including one in 13 African-Americans. In Virginia, seven percent of all citizens and a staggering 20 percent of African-Americans are disenfranchised. Black Virginians are five times more likely than whites to be disenfranchised. These laws produce a small benefit for the party of white voters and could help swing a close election, which is why Republicans are fighting so hard against softening these restrictions
This infuriating racial disparity exists in state after state because that is the entire purpose of felon disenfranchisement laws. They spread after the Civil War and during Jim Crow to prevent newly-freed black men from voting, with explicit appeals to white supremacy to win their passage. It is no coincidence that the states with the harshest restrictions are predominantly Southern while the two whitest states, Maine and Vermont, have no restrictions at all. There is no compelling public interest to barring felons from voting, which is why many of our peer democracies have no restrictions, such as Canada, Israel, and Spain.
Every adult citizen deserves the right to vote. However controversial it might be to give inmates voting rights, disenfranchising those who have completely served out their sentences is simply indefensible. Republicans should be ashamed they are defending Jim Crow laws which disenfranchise one in five African-Americans in states like Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia. Voting rights shouldn’t have to be a partisan issue, but rulings like this one and another recent party-line court ruling against felon voting rights in Iowa show just how important it is to elect officials like McAuliffe who will fight to secure one of our most important rights.