WHEN Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, issued an executive order in April restoring voting rights to 206,000 felons who had served their sentences, Republicans were outraged. Virginia is a key battleground state and Mr McAuliffe appeared to be trying to tip it to Hillary Clinton, his friend, by flooding the polls with newly enfranchised ex-offenders. Two months later, on July 22nd, the order was reversed by a Republican-controlled Virginia Supreme Court. Underscoring that this was a political dispute veiled in legalities, the lead plaintiffs were the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates and the Republican majority leader of the Virginia Senate. On August 15th Mr McAuliffe suggested that the four justices who decided the case did so because their jobs depended upon it. In Virginia, judges are elected by the General Assembly.
The court did not dispute the governor’s constitutional power to re-enfranchise ex-offenders and the constitution does not explicitly require the governor to act on a case-by-case basis. But the court insisted on following a historical precedent dating to Virginia's earliest days in the 1600s...Continue reading
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