Rights were restored when Gov. Terry McAuliffe last spring issued an executive order giving back the ability to vote to more than 200,000 ex-offenders.
Right was restored when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled last week, in a 4-3 split, that the mass order was improper.
The two goals are not mutually exclusive.
Rights can be — and should be — restored to felons who have fully paid their debt to society.
It was the broad and sweeping nature of the governor’s action that came under judicial review. For decades, previous governors had restored felons’ rights by individual order. In recent years, several governors picked up the pace and restored rights to larger numbers of ex-offenders.
Mr. McAuliffe amplified that trend by several orders of magnitude when he approved restoration of rights to 206,000 felons without individual review or individual action.
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“To be sure, no governor of this commonwealth, until now, has even suggested that such a [sweeping] power exists,” Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons wrote in the majority opinion. “And the only governors who have seriously considered the question concluded that no such power exists.”
In other words, Mr. McAuliffe exercised a power he did not possess.
Many critics questioned whether the mass restoration was legal — or even wise.
But opposition to the governor’s mass order was characterized by some as opposition to the fundamental philosophy of rights restoration itself.
That blanket assumption does not fit all circumstances. It is entirely possible to support restoration of rights as a goal and at the same time to censure Mr. McAuliffe’s flawed method of achieving that goal. Such critics simply wanted the restoration of rights to be conducted properly and in order.
Admittedly, though, other, less charitable motivations have sullied the debate.
One is that fact that some people doubtless do believe that rights should not be restored under any circumstances. In fact, Virginia’s precedent is to assume that rights will not be restored unless felons’ cases are individually reviewed and restoration is individually approved.
This practice can be unfair to many ex-offenders now leading productive lives. And the practice may no longer be acceptable to a majority of Virginians. But if so, it should be altered through proper constitutional channels.
The second sullying influence is that of politics. There is political gain to be had on both sides: In denouncing the mass order, Republicans play to a conservative base wary of excessive power; in defending it, Democrats play to a liberal base long critical of many forms of disenfranchisement.
We wish politics could be set aside so that Virginians could evaluate this issue with greater clarity and less confusion.
Because it is an important issue.
Ex-felons should not be forever debarred from voting and exercising other rights if they have turned their lives around. But the process of restoration must be implemented carefully, and it must be implemented legally.