Can Republicans Succeed in Denying Ex-offenders their Newly Restored Voting Rights?

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In Virginia, the state constitution is pretty clear, says a man who helped draft it.

Aside from the fact that it is privately funded there are few surprises in the lawsuit Virginia Republicans filed Monday challenging Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive orders restoring the voting rights of ex-offenders in the state. The complaint alleges that the governor exceeded his authority under the Commonwealth’s constitution, that he may restore voting rights only to each individual ex-offender instead of restoring that right to all of them, and it asks the state’s judiciary to block what the complaint says is an “unprecedented” executive action.

Even though the Virginia Supreme Court leans conservative, that isn’t likely to happen, says A.E. Dick Howard, a distinguished professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Howard, a constitutional expert who helped draft the current version of state’s constitution, was asked by McAuliffe to assess the constitutionality of the new rule before the governor announced it. The professor told McAuliffe, and subsequently told us, that the broad new order is consistent with Article V, Section 12 of that constitution which authorizes a governor “to remove political disabilities consequent upon conviction….”

A Virginia governor does have the obligation under the constitution to “communicate” to legislators the “particulars” of every reprieve or pardon “or punishment commuted, with his reasons for remitting, granting, or commuting the same.” But that’s not what the fight is about. The men and women to whom Gov. McAuliffe has restored rights already have served their sentences, and their parole, and their probation, and if they were granted a reprieve or a pardon or a commutation the governor already satisfied his obligation to communicate his decision in any individual case.

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