Restoring Voting Rights

With past criminal convictions, more than 6 million US citizens can not vote. Seven million of these citizens live, work and support our community. But due to their past beliefs, they are still deprived of this basic democratic right. These laws have imbalanced influence of ethnic minorities rooted in the history of races with our problems. In the whole country, one out of every 13 African Americans of voting age loses voting power, four times that of all other Americans.

Through lawsuits, legislative and administrative publicity, and public education, the Brennan Center has been working nationwide to restore voting rights of offenders in the past. Look at our legal guide on our deprivation of civil rights for felony and our work on parliamentary democracy restoration law.

In April of this year, the Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was convicted of a felony and issued an enforcement ordinance to restore the voting rights of all the people in Virginia who finished the verdict. This recovery voting behavior affects 206,000 people in Virginia. The Supreme Court subsequently declared the order invalid, but the Governor decided that it had no right to issue such complete recovery of voting rights. Governor's response is to create a separate process to restore the voting rights of these individuals and by the end of 2016 approximately 67,000 Virginia residents have reinstated.

In the Commonwealth, Terry McAuliffe Governor (Democrat) is reconstructing the right to vote for felony charges against Republican dominant Virginia Supreme Court. Unlike most states that automatically return to a felon's voting right after the trial, Virginia State law requires former offenders to petition only for the governor. In fact, this means that most of the recidivism before 45% are blacks is being deprived of their rights. Earlier this year, Governor Makaulif announced his intention to completely repair all the former felonies of the Commonwealth, and the Republicans immediately disputed. At the meeting Republicans are about to stop his efforts to do so alone before the election in November.

The propaganda group can recently increase the number of former barons in Virginia state after a massive resumption of voting rights within the state. However, due to the felony so far, the right to vote on the rolling basis is regained and the governor prioritizes those who are likely to vote because they previously registered, so it is difficult to evaluate this. Nevertheless, in the 2017 election, data on the participation of broader former accomplice groups is limited and reported to be only slightly higher than the data observed in Florida.