In light of a Washington ruling that struck down the state voting rights restoration procedure for felons as “racially discriminatory,” advocates continue to push Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to use his last days of executive power to overturn the state’s “relic of Virginia’s Jim Crow era.”
The Virginia law – which has resulted in the lifetime disenfranchisement of 300,000 Virginians who have completed their entire criminal sentences and are living and working in the communities – is one of only two permanent disenfranchisement laws in the country. It also has a disproportionate impact on African Americans.
“Although African Americans account for just a fifth of Virginia’s 7.8 million citizens, they are thought to constitute about half of those ineligible to vote,” according to a Washington Post editorial today. “No wonder racist state lawmakers who reviewed the commonwealth’s constitution a century ago lauded the provision and, in the toxic spirit of Jim Crow, elected to keep it.”
“Kaine has the power to consign this relic of Virginia’s Jim Crow era to the dust heap of history, and to take an important stand for civil rights as he prepares to leave office,” wrote Erika Wood, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, in a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed today.
The ACLU of Va. also wrote the Roanoke Times, clearing any confusion regarding Virginia’s constitution that leads some to assume the governor must only restore voting rights, one person at a time: “Good people may differ on how to interpret the law, but there is little doubt that the Virginia Constitution treats the governor’s power to restore voting rights differently from other kinds of clemency powers and that it does not carry the same reporting obligation required for relief of fines, pardons and commutations.”
Currently, any individual who wishes to vote must go through a years-long process to prove to the governor that he or she is worthy of having voting rights restored. Though Kaine has “approved the vast majority of petitions by former felons seeking to recover their voting rights, the cumbersome rules mean that in practice only a few thousand such applications are submitted each year,” editorialized the Post. This slow and unnecessary process to restore individual voting rights of released felons, in addition to the law’s disproportionate impact on African American communities speaks volumes: It’s time to stop undercutting democracy and update that oppressive law.
“The right to vote forms the very foundation of our democracy,” wrote Wood. “It is simply too important to just shrug and walk away from it.”