Richmond, Virginia—Today, Charlotte Rene Woods of the Virginia Mercury reported on a landmark victory for returning Virginia citizens who have sought to restore their right to vote. Virginia has long been one of a handful of states that continued to restrict voting rights to citizens convicted of a felony once they had served their sentence, and the only one to require a personal clearance from the governor as part of a cumbersome post-conviction process. Earlier this year, a federal court ruling found that Virginia’s practice of disenfranchising people with felony convictions violated Civil War-era Readmission Acts, which barred former Confederate states from stripping voting rights beyond those crimes recognized as common law at the time. As a result of that decision, on June 1, thousands of Virginians will become eligible to register to vote without first needing a governor’s approval.

“For too long, Virginia has used a broken, opaque system to prevent people from being a full part of their community once they return from incarceration, and that system got exponentially worse under former Governor Glenn Youngkin,” said Ashleigh Crocker, Interim Executive Director of Progress Virginia. “His use of a complex petition process with no clear standards to gatekeep who participates in democracy was simply about keeping people out. Today’s ruling is a long-overdue rebuke of that system, and we are proud to see thousands of community members finally reclaim what should never have been taken from them.”

Some of the highlights and logistics from the Mercury piece are below:

• The initial deadline given by the federal judge to allow new registrations was May 1; in consultation with the Attorney General’s office, the deadline has been extended to June 1.
• Several governors had attempted to streamline the rights restoration process, but under former Governor Glenn Youngkin, the process switched to a complex, petition-based process. “With little clarity on what would garner a successful petition, restoration numbers dropped under his tenure.”
• Under the framing of the decision, only some crimes (enumerated under the Civil War-era Readmissions Acts) may qualify or disqualify returning citizens: state agencies are currently formally defining that list.
• This decision runs concurrently with an effort to amend Virginia’s constitution to allow automatic rights restoration for returning citizens. The measure has cleared the legislative referral process and will appear on ballots in November.
• Details on how to register to vote are available on the State Department of Elections website.