After the Virginia Supreme Court overturned Gov. McAuliffe’s blanket restoration of voting rights to over 200,000 former felons, he begin the process of issuing individual orders, including to the 10,000+ who have already registered. But I had the opportunity to read the Supreme Court Order (Howell v. McAulife) on the way to Philly, and the majority (4-3) opinion is appalling.
- The Opinion notes that Gov. McAuliffe order “unlawfully enfranchised” Virginia voters. Id. at 7. I haven’t had a chance to check Westlaw yet, but I don’t the term “unlawful enfranchisement” has ever been used ever. They had to make up a new thing to accuse the governor of doing.
- The threshold issue was standing – did the GA members and voters challenging the Governor’s orders have a direct interest that was harmed The Court reaches to misapply redistricting cases to find that allowing additional people to register to vote “dilutes” the plaintiffs’ votes – “When a pool of voters is made larger, each vote carries less weight . . . [adding] citizens to the pool of eligible voters . . . weakens the strength of those Virginians who were already eligible to cast a ballot.” Id. at 10. And existing voters “suffer[] a vote dilution injury.” Id. I’ve been doing voter registration since I was 18 – it has never occurred to me that getting a new person to register to vote in some way diluted or weakened my vote. Who the hell thinks that way? I guess the GOP voter suppression team and now the VA Supreme Court.
- On the merits, the Court ignored “strict construction” of the Virginia Constitution’s language which says the Governor may restore rights and doesn’t say he has to issue individual orders. Instead claiming “a page of history is worth a volume of logic,” id. at 10, the Court repeatedly asked why 71 Virginia Governors over 240 years had never done this before. Maybe, because the felon disenfranchisement laws were often targeted to deprive African-Americans of the vote and a lot of these governors weren’t really big supporters of African-American sufferage, or integration, or even freedom. It is extraordinary that an opinion contains so much discussion of history fails to include one word on the history of the racist application of the disenfranchisement provision.
- The Court granted the requested remedy – the extraordinary writ of mandamus prohibiting the executive actions, even to the point of “cancelling the registration of anyone who has registered” pursuant to the governor’s order – tearing away the voting right only so recently restored.
- The Repbulican General Assemlby actions in recently overturning the Governor’s Supreme Court appointment may have been intended to have an in terrorum effect on the Court; it worked.
So the Governor is cranking up Mr. Jefferson’s autopen and the work of restoring rights continues.