On the night Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president, Leah Taylor, a fast-food worker and African-American mother of six, stayed up until 2 a.m. watching the election returns. “I knew that was history, and I wanted to be a part of it,” she said. But she did not vote. Ms. Taylor, 45, has never voted. In 1991, when she was 20, she was stripped of her voting rights after being convicted of selling crack cocaine and sent to jail for a year. So she was stunned when an organizer from a progressive group, New Virginia Majority, showed up one recent afternoon at the church soup kitchen where she eats lunch and said he could register her. “Your rights have been restored!” the organizer, Assadique Abdul-Rahman, declared with a theatrical flourish, waving an executive order signed in April by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Ms. Taylor, so moved she nearly cried, promptly signed up. Thus did Ms. Taylor join a wave of newly eligible voters, all with criminal pasts, signing up in Virginia. But what Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away. Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s sweeping order, which re-enfranchised 206,000 Virginians who have completed sentences, probation or parole. Last week, the Supreme Court announced a special session to hear arguments in July — in time to rule before the November election.
The suit has plunged Virginia and Mr. McAuliffe — a Democrat and close friend of Hillary Clinton’s, the party’s likely presidential nominee — into yet another racially charged voting rights battle. In May, afederal judge upheld a Republican-backed law requiring Virginia voters to provide photo identification, while the Supreme Court let stand a court-imposed redistricting map, drawn to address Democrats’ complaints of racially motivated gerrymandering.
This next fight over restoring voting rights to convicted felons — an issue playing out nationally — could affect the presidential contest and Mrs. Clinton’s fortunes in Virginia, a critical swing state. Ever since Mr. McAuliffe’s order on April 22, progressive groups have been waging a furious registration campaign; as of Friday, state elections officials said, more than 5,800 newly eligible voters had signed up.
“This could get really messy,” said Tram Nguyen, an executive director of New Virginia Majority, a leader in the registration campaign. “What happens if the executive order gets overturned? There’s no precedent; 5,800 people are actively on the registration rolls now. Do we purge them?
Full Article: Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote – The New York Times.