Three constitutional amendments are on the Virginia ballot on November 3. This is about Question 3, which states: “Provide that persons convicted of felonies have their voting rights restored upon release from incarceration.” We should all vote yes.
It has been common practice in the United States to make felons ineligible to vote, in some cases permanently. Since 1997, 26 states and the District of Columbia have expanded voting rights to people living with felony convictions. As a result, over 2 million Americans have regained the right to vote.
Virginia has been one of three states whose constitution permanently disenfranchises citizens with past felony convictions but grants the state’s governor the authority to restore voting rights. On March 16, 2021, former Gov. Ralph Northam took executive action to automatically restore the right to vote to all Virginians who are not currently incarcerated. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who took office on January 15, 2022, terminated that practice in that first year. Individuals convicted of a felony who did not have their rights restored under the previous practice must now apply to the governor for individual restoration. This policy change made Virginia the only state in the nation that permanently disenfranchises all people with felony convictions unless the government approves individual rights restoration.
Disenfranchisement of criminal offenders has been around since the 19th century; many states instituted felony disenfranchisement policies after the Civil War, often in response to the 15th Amendment giving Black men the right to vote. By 1869, 29 states had enacted such laws.
Between 1890 and 1908, Southern state legislatures made several moves to limit further the ability of African Americans to vote. They enacted new constitutions, added constitutional amendments, and passed laws to make voting for African Americans very difficult. One of those laws was felony disenfranchisement.
The white supremacists that pushed for laws to take away the right to vote were openly intentional about it. At the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1901-02, delegate Carter Glass made the following statement: “This plan [which included felony disenfranchisement laws] will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county…will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”
When questioned as to whether these measures were potentially discriminatory, Glass exclaimed, “Discrimination! Why that is exactly what we propose. To remove every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.”
This was the same U.S. Senator Carter Glass of the Glass–Steagall Act, which separated the activities of banks and securities brokers and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
In a 2014 article in the New York Times, Brent Staples described how in 1894 a white South Carolina newspaper advocated for that State’s voting laws to be amended to limit voting by African Americans, else whites would be swept away at the polls by the black vote. The president of the 1901 constitutional convention in Alabama argued that changing the ballot to exclude blacks was necessary because not only were they inferior to whites, but the state needed to avoid the “menace of Negro domination.”
However, on January 22, 2026. in a historic ruling, a federal judge found that Virginia’s Constitution broke federal law by stripping the voting rights of every Virginian with a felony conviction, paving the way for potentially hundreds of thousands of Virginians to have their voting rights restored.
“I am overjoyed at today’s ruling and what it means for thousands of Virginians,” said Tati King, plaintiff in King v. Youngkin. “After so many years of fighting for my rights, I will finally be able to participate in our democracy and exercise my vote as an American citizen.”
Promptly, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger restored voting rights to 66,085 people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to vote because of past felony convictions.
Restoration of voting rights is a big deal–and long overdue. Let’s finish the job and vote yes on Question 3.
