Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe defended his executive order to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 ex-felons, citing the state’s past history of disenfranchisement and saying it was the “right thing to do morally.” Speaking with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, McAuliffe, a Democrat with deep ties to Hillary and Bill Clinton, said his executive order would help make felons who had served their time for crimes committed “feel good about themselves.”
“It was the right thing to do legally, and most importantly, George, it wasn’t politics, it was the right thing to do morally,” said McAuliffe, who said the state’s Democratic attorney general approved the move because clemency power belongs to the governor.
“It works when you welcome people back into society and make them feel good about themselves,” he added.
But Republican members of the state legislature are pushing back on McAuliffe’s move, saying the order is designed to help boost the Democratic presidential nominee in Virginia, an important swing state in the general election. And one assemblyman, Republican Robert Bell, has questioned how McAuliffe’s decision helps the victims of the violent criminals who have now had their rights restored.
“Murder victims don’t get to sit on juries, but now the men that killed them will,” said Bell, who is running for attorney general in 2017. “A murder victim won’t get to vote but the man that killed them will.”
Stephanopoulos asked McAuliffe for a response to Bell. The governor ignored the question and instead argued that “everybody ought to have a second chance.”
“Second chances matter. These folks, George, understand they have served their time; they’re done with probation or parole. They’re back in society. They’re living in our communities. They have jobs. They’re paying taxes. Why don’t we possibly want them to vote? Why are we putting walls up?” McAuliffe said. “So once you have paid your debt to society—and that debt was determined by a judge and a jury—once you have finished that, why should we have a lifetime ban?”
McAuliffe then likened his order to civil rights measures in the past that rectified the denial of voting rights to law-abiding black citizens.
“We have had some very horrible disenfranchisement of voters in Virginia, and I stood right in front of that capitol, where we had a poll tax, literacy tax, disenfranchisement of voters. I stood not 20 yards from where Abraham Lincoln met the freed slaves 151 years ago in April,” he said.
Stephanopoulos pressed McAuliffe to explain why the measure isn’t designed to help Democrats. “Well, I would tell the Republicans, quit complaining and go out and earn these folks’ right to vote for you,” McAuliffe said. “Go out and talk to them.”
He also offered his advice to members of the other party.
“I would tell them to be very careful at how they frame this, very careful of their rhetoric,” McAuliffe said.
Watch the interview below:
