Bills that would loosen restrictions on where and when a person can vote failed to move past a Virginia House subcommittee Monday morning, scuttling a key part of Gov. Tim Kaine’s legislative agenda in the last session of his term.
A six-legislator panel within the House Privileges and Elections Committee voted 4-2 to table a bill to allow “no-excuse” in-person absentee voting, and another that would let any registered voter cast an early ballot between three and 14 days before an election. The votes followed party lines.
Virginia law requires voters to meet one of 17 reasons for their inability to be at the polls on Election Day to qualify for an absentee ballot, including pregnancy or illness.
The subcommittee’s decision likely means the demise of the bills, which proponents tout as a way to encourage voting and remove logjams at polling places. Kaine endorsed the no-excuse absentee legislation earlier this month, saying it would “remove some of the practical barriers that prevent people from participating in the democratic process.”
“The governor is very disappointed, obviously,” Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said. “It’s a good bill, it’s a pro-democracy bill, he looks forward to moving [it] forward and being approved in the Senate, and moving forward in the General Assembly.”
Any such measure approved in the Democrat-controlled Senate would probably face the same opposition in the Republican-dominated House later in the session.
Opponents say loosening elections laws won’t do any good. A December report from American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate found that of the 12 states with turnout declines in the Nov. 4 election, 10 allowed some form of “convenience voting,” a term that includes no-excuse absentee balloting and early voting. Of the 13 states with the largest increases in turnout, seven didn’t allow any form of convenience voting.
Bipartisan redistricting vote scuttled
A bill that would create a bipartisan panel to redraw Virginia’s General Assembly and congressional districts in 2011 also died in a House subcommittee Monday.
The subcommittee of the Privileges and Elections Committee killed the bill on a 4-2 party-line vote. The legislation would have set up a seven-member commission appointed by leaders in both parties to prepare the redistricting plans, which would be based on the results of the 2010 U.S. census.
