Virginia’s Supreme Court announced it will hold a special session in July to hear the lawsuit brought by Republican state legislators challenging Gov. Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s (D) move to restore the voting rights of convicted felons in the state. The court will hear the case July 19, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported, after Republicans urged the justices in court filings for a decision by August 25 ahead of November’s election.
Republicans in the state were infuriated by McAuliffe’s April executive order to give some 200,000 convicted felons their voting rights back, dismissing it as a gambit to help get Hillary Clinton elected.
Days later they announced they would be filing a lawsuit challenging the governor’s constitutional authority to sign such an order. The lawsuit — filed at the end of May by state House Speaker William Howell (R) and state Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment (R) along with four other Virginia voters — claimed the governor can only restore voting rights to felons on a case-by-case basis, instead of en masse, as McAuliffe’s order does.
In a response to Wednesday’s announcement of a special court session, Howell said in a statement,“We are pleased the Supreme Court recognizes the urgency of our challenge to Governor McAuliffe’s unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of executive power.”
Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), who is defending the governor’s actions, was not against holding a special session, but argued in court filings that the case should not be heard in June, since Republicans had a month to pull their lawsuit together, the Richmond Times-Dispatch said.
Didn’t the previous VA Governor restore voting rights to felons? As much as I disliked Gov. McDouchebag, he did the same thing…only it was 100.000 by executive order instead of 200,000. How partisan can it be when two different Governors in VA from two different parties do the same action under their authority?
Ah yes…here it is:
How do they even have standing? I understand they may not like giving likely Democratic voters the right to vote, but this in no way affects their civil rights.
It must be one of those IOIYAR situations. As a Virginian, I fully support Governor McAuliffe in restoring voting rights to these folks. If what Gov. McDonnell did was constitutional (as it relates to Virginia’s Constitution), then what Gov. McAuliffe did is constitutional.
Oh, but I’m sure McDonnell personally signed each one of those 100,000 documents, so that was OK.
I suppose the argument is that any voter would have standing, since allowing an otherwise ineligible person to vote “dilutes” the vote of the eligible voter.
The suit, I’m afraid, actually has merit. The VA Constitution, Article V, Section 12, says:
That second paragraph is the problem.