It was the biggest policy fight in Virginia last year, but nearly halfway through the General Assembly session, nobody’s really talking about it.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s push for a sweeping expansion of voting rights for more than 200,000 felons, which drew blasts of criticism from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and a successful Republican legal challenge in the Supreme Court of Virginia, seemed to tee up a big issue for lawmakers in the 2017 legislative session. McAuliffe and other Democrats railed against the disenfranchisement policy in the state constitution as a relic from Virginia’s racist past that should be eliminated.
Republicans accused the governor of stretching his power beyond its legal limits and said they’d look at constitutional reforms to restore order to a system that can be as forgiving or restrictive as the executive branch wants.
But many observers think there’s a good chance lawmakers will leave town in a month without advancing any major reforms, leaving in place a policy — one of the toughest of its kind in the nation — that strips all felons’ voting rights for life unless a governor acts to restore them.
“I am totally perplexed,” Charles Satchell, of Richmond, said at a House of Delegates hearing last week after he told lawmakers he spent 30 years behind bars and was released in 2006. “What does it benefit the citizens of Virginia for me not to have my rights?”