Virginians voted Tuesday on whether to take a Jim Crow rule out of their constitution. Amendment 3 would restore the vote automatically to anyone released from prison, and for the first time it would name voting a fundamental right. As of Tuesday night, the result had not been reported.
The rule on the ballot dates to 1902, when Virginia rewrote its constitution alongside poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses, all aimed at keeping Black citizens from voting. State Sen. Mamie Locke, a Democrat, called felony disenfranchisement in Virginia “an overt and intended effort to block Black people from voting.” The state is one of three whose constitutions permanently strip the vote after a felony conviction and leave restoration to the governor.
That discretion is what the amendment removes. Today a person must ask the governor, and the answer depends on who holds the office. Del. Cia Price, a Democrat from Newport News, put it this way: “Instead of it being based on who is in charge at the time, this would be a right for all eligible Virginians.”
The amendment’s text says a person “is not entitled to vote during his period of incarceration but is automatically invested with the right to vote upon release from incarceration.” It also updates the constitution’s mental competency language to focus on understanding the voting process.
A federal court has already moved part of the way. This fall a judge ruled that Virginia’s system violated an 1870 federal law, and the state now lets most people with felony convictions register without the governor’s approval. Only those convicted of murder or manslaughter remain shut out. Mary Bauer, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, said: “Essentially what the court has said is that the overwhelming majority of people who have lost the right to vote should never have lost it in the first place.” She called the old rule “a direct remnant of Jim Crow.”
That ruling is why the vote still matters. A court order can be appealed or narrowed, and a governor can change how restoration works. A constitutional amendment cannot be undone by the next administration.
Republicans have objected to the details. House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore of Scott County opposes the amendment because it makes no distinction between violent and nonviolent felonies and does not require people to finish court-ordered financial obligations first. Both objections are fair to put to voters. The answer is that a sentence ends when a person is released, and a right that depends on a fine someone cannot pay becomes a poll tax by another name. Virginia already tried that logic once.
For Black Virginians, the stakes are plain. The 1902 rule was written to reach them, and it still reaches them: Black residents are disproportionately likely to have a felony record because of who policing and prosecution have targeted. Every person returned to the rolls by this amendment is a voter the state chose, for more than a century, to silence.
Virginia’s State Board of Elections will certify the results. If the amendment passes, the automatic restoration would be written into the constitution rather than left to court orders and governors.
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