Virginia Democrats Advance a Measure to End Lifetime Voting Ban. Now It Gets Complicated.

Alonzo Bland Jr., of Richmond, did everything the state asked of him following his felony conviction: He served time in state prison, completed a term of probation upon release, and paid off all court debts. Still he cannot vote, because the governor, Glenn Youngkin, who has sole discretion over whether and when people exiting Virginia prisons regain voting rights, has not granted the permission. 

“I’ve been denied three times,” he told Bolts. “What more do you want from me?”

Bland Jr. and the thousands of other Virginians in his position may not have to ask that question for much longer. Democrats in the state legislature are advancing a constitutional amendment that would remove the governor’s control over voting rights restoration, and instead guarantee that people get their rights when they exit incarceration. 

“This should not be in one sole person’s hands,” Bland Jr. said. “This is a democracy, not a dictatorship.” 

This month, the state House and Senate each approved a constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights for people leaving prison. The reform would end the governor’s discretion on the matter.

“Asking people to get on their hands and knees and beg the governor for their constitutional rights is offensive,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a Democrat who has championed the issue, told Bolts this week. The proposal awaits one more procedural vote in each chamber this year; Surovell said that will take place as soon as early February. 

But there’s a long road ahead, because Virginia has a complex process for constitutional amendments: They must pass in two consecutive legislative sessions, and then be approved by voters in a statewide referendum. Concretely, this means that the voting rights reform needs to pass the legislature again in 2026 before voters even get to weigh in. 

And that repeat passage very likely hinges on whether Democrats maintain legislative control during this November’s elections, when the entirety of the state House is on the ballot. This measure is universally supported by Democratic lawmakers and almost universally opposed by Republicans, and the GOP could, and probably would, look to kill it next year if they win back the state House in the fall.

Virginia’s system of felony disenfranchisement is a Jim Crow relic, enshrined during a 1902 state constitutional convention with specifically racist intent. One of the lead authors at that convention said at the time that a system which ties voting rights to criminal records would “eliminate the darkie as a political factor” in Virginia, and guarantee “the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”

This century-old policy is still hard at work today: 10 percent of Black Virginians were barred from voting in 2024, well above the national average. Black people remain massively overrepresented in Virginia’s prison population, and are, therefore, massively overrepresented in the pool of people exiting prison without voting rights.

Today, Virginia maintains a far harsher approach to felony disenfranchisement than exists in the rest of the country, let alone the world: Anyone convicted of any felony loses their voting rights for life. The only way to regain those rights is a personal restoration from the governor. 

Virginia is currently the only U.S. state to enforce such a rule.

But the state had been on a different path until recently, as a bipartisan series of three Virginia governors significantly softened the policy over the decade preceding Youngkin’s election. 

Governor Bob McDonnell, a Republican, took a first step in 2013 by announcing he would restore the voting rights of about 8,000 people convicted of nonviolent offenses after they completed their full sentences. His Democratic successor, Terry McAuliffe, then said he would automatically restore the voting rights of anyone who had completed a full sentence, including terms of probation and parole. He enfranchised some 170,000 people.  

In 2021, McAuliffe’s successor, Democrat Ralph Northam, loosened the rules further. He began restoring people’s voting rights immediately upon their release from incarceration, whether or not they were still on probation or parole, and regardless of any outstanding court debts they may have owed. Northam restored voting rights to about 126,000 people.

Youngkin, the Republican who succeeded Northam in 2022, shut down that decade of reform. He said he’d only consider whether people are worthy of having their rights restored on an individual, case-by-case basis.   

Virginia advocates who help incarcerated people navigate their reentry say the process has been opaque; Youngkin has not specified the guidelines he uses to review cases, and many disenfranchised people have told Bolts in recent years that his office consistently rejects restoration applications without providing any reasoning. This arrangement has left Bland Jr. and many thousands of Virginians demoralized, and unclear as to what, if anything, they can do to become voters again. 

“It’s definitely something individuals coming from incarceration worry about,” Bland Jr. said. “They want their rights back, and a lot of us feel like we shouldn’t be continually punished after we served our time.”

Youngkin, who faces two active lawsuits on the issue, has also introduced confusion in other ways. In the lead-up to the 2023 legislative elections, his administration wrongfully purged people with past convictions from voter rolls, even when those people had been restored by past governors.

The proposal now advancing in Richmond would be a dramatic shake-up for Virginia, but it would hardly be radical by national standards. About half of states automatically restore rights upon prison release. Maine and Vermont, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, never strip people of their right to vote in the first place, including when they’re in prison. 

Virginia will elect a new governor later this year, and Youngkin is barred from seeking reelection due to term limits. It is possible that his successor will reinstate an automatic restoration policy like Northam’s. 

But voting rights advocates there don’t want to bank on the good will of whomever wins this or any future election, preferring to enshrine across-the-board standards in the state constitution.

“The governor shouldnt get to pick and choose their voters, regardless of what party they’re in,” Shawn Weneta, a formerly incarcerated Virginian, told Bolts. 

“It shouldn’t be this governor, the last governor, or the next governor. One partisan actor shouldn’t get to choose who gets to vote,” continued Weneta, whose voting rights Northam restored in 2021, and who is now a board member at The Humanization Project, which supports the rights of currently and formerly incarcerated people in Virginia. 

Youngkin, who did not respond to a request for comment for this article, cannot use his veto power to block a constitutional amendment from advancing. 

The reform still isn’t sure to succeed since it needs to pass again next year. Today, Virginia Democrats hold the slightest majorities possible: 51-49 in the House and 21-19 in the Senate. They have used that advantage to pass three proposed constitutional amendments this year—the one concerning rights restoration plus two others that would, respectively, enshrine abortion access and marriage equality. (These other amendments also await final, procedural votes in February.)

The Senate is not on the ballot in November. But Democrats have no margin for error in the House races if they want to maintain control of the lower chamber, and thus maintain control of the proposed constitutional amendments. 

“It all depends on the constituency of the House of Delegates,” said Surovell, the Senate Majority leader. “If the House were to change control, the amendment would probably die.”

The current House Speaker, Democrat Don Scott, was convicted of a felony in 1994 and was unable to vote for almost 20 years, before then-Governor McDonnell restored him. Scott has been vocal in support of automatic restoration and recently told The Washington Post, “There are a lot of people like me who are waiting for a second chance.”

State Delegate Don Cherry, who was one of just four Republican lawmakers across both chambers to support the voting rights amendment this month, told Bolts he expects that, if the House flips, “It would be D.O.A.” 

“They could kill it in a multitude of ways,” Cherry said of his party’s leadership. The chambers’ top GOP officials, House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert and Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, both voted against the amendment. 

This exact situation has played out in Virginia already: Democrats passed a rights restoration amendment in 2021, then lost statehouse control that fall, and Republicans killed the proposal in 2022.

Anticipating a possible flip in November, Cherry thought that lawmakers this year should consider a less ambitious amendment for rights restoration. He sponsored a measure last year to automatically restore rights for people with past felonies, but only for those convicted of nonviolent offenses, and only once they had satisfied their full sentences, including post-release supervision and any restitution or court fines and fees. 

This plan would at minimum have provided the certainty that folks like Alonzo Bland Jr. badly desire, and, Cherry believes, could have won enough Republican votes to survive next session even if the House turns red. Cherry told Bolts of his conversations with Democratic lawmakers: “Their position is that they truly believe theirs is the right thing to do, and they would not compromise their belief that this should be anything less than full restoration upon release from incarceration.” Surovell confirmed to Bolts that he never entertained anything less than automatic restoration upon prison release.

Cherry still voted for the Democratic proposal this month. “I don’t think your constitutional rights should be tied to a criminal conviction,” he said, “and I think once you’re released from incarceration and you’ve done your time, your rights should be returned to you as quickly and efficiently as possible.” he said.

But some advocates have pushed Virginia to go even further and entirely repeal felony disenfranchisement. The legislature in 2020 entertained but did not adopt a constitutional amendment that would have enabled all people with felony convictions to vote, including while they are in prison.

Weneta supports the current proposal to restore people’s voting rights upon their release from prison, but he says he’ll continue to seek full enfranchisement.

“This is already a compromise position for advocates like myself,” he said of this year’s amendment. “We believe in universal suffrage.”