Virginia’s Republican lawmakers filed a lawsuit Monday against Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive action to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 felons.
The lawsuit says that McAuliffe, a Democrat, didn’t have the authority to issue the executive order. In April, McAuliffe signed an order allowing roughly 206,000 felons who served their prison time and finished parole to register to vote.
“From Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to Tim Kaine and Bob McDonnell, every governor of Virginia has understood the clemency power to authorize the governor to grant clemency on an individualized basis only,” said the lawsuit filed in the state Supreme Court.
House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment, R-James City, said Monday that they were filing the lawsuit in state on behalf of themselves and four other Virginia voters.
When McAuliffe issued his executive order, he said it was to help former convicts transition back into society. Of those persons who would have their voting rights restored, nearly 80 percent were convicted of nonviolent offenses, his administration said.
“Once you have served your time, and you’ve finished up your supervised parole … I want you back as a full citizen of the commonwealth. I want you to have a job. I want you paying taxes, and you can’t be a second-class citizen,” he said in April.
The McAuliffe administration also contends that the state’s harsh voting rules disproportionally affect African-Americans. The GOP lawsuit disagrees.
“Gov. McAuliffe has falsely suggested that Virginia’s felon disenfranchisement provision was first introduced into the Constitution after the Civil War for the purpose of disenfranchising African-Americans,” the lawsuit says. “But Virginia has prohibited felons from voting since at least 1830 — decades before African-Americans could vote.”
McAuliffe has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
