Local Republicans, ACLU head clash over suffrage

The topic of the Prince William Committee of 100’s forum was voting, but it was those who can’t cast a ballot who got the most attention.

State Sen. George L. Barker, who moderated the nonpartisan educational group’s discussion Wednesday night, led three speakers through a host of election issues.

But none stirred more talk than the notion of restoring felons’ voting rights.

That was brought up by panelist Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.

The Old Dominion and Kentucky are the only states that permanently disenfranchise anyone convicted of a felony, Willis said.

Only the governor can restore a felon’s right to vote, which makes the task equivalent to a pardon, he said.

Former Govs. Timothy M. Kaine and Mark R. Warner restored suffrage to thousands of felons, Willis said, but more than 300,000 -- many of them racial minorities -- still can’t enter the voting booth.

“It’s actually the last formal vestige of Jim Crow,” he said at the Four Points by Sheraton outside Manassas.

So Willis encouraged Barker, a Democrat, and fellow panelist Del. Richard L. Anderson to work on a state constitutional amendment to make voter restoration easier.

Felons who get to vote again are half as likely to commit another crime as those who can’t vote, Willis said.

Also, some convicted of such crimes in their youth end up being productive in most all other areas of their lives, said Barker, who represents part of northeastern Prince William County.

But even when they can show rehabilitation, getting to vote again can take a long time.

Barker said he worked with a man who wanted to vote in the 2008 presidential election. The man had a drug problem when he was younger and was convicted of a felony.

He started asking for the right to vote in April 2008. And he received it. But not until September. September 2009.

Those facts didn’t sway a couple of prominent Republicans in the audience at the hotel near Interstate 66, though.

Manassas City Councilman Jonathan Way asked why felons should have this particular right restored when the nature of their crimes sometimes meant the loss of other freedoms.

Then local GOP and Tea Party activist Thomas J. Whitmore turned the argument around.
“Let’s talk about the victims for a second,” he said.

They should be the focus, Whitmore said, not the ones who have committed crimes.

“They’ll never be complete,” he said. “They’ll never have redress.”

However, Willis said, criminal sentences are supposed to have an end, not to be open-ended. So it only stands to reason that voting rights should be able to be restored more easily.

Bridging the gap between the two, however, was Sherry Zachry, past president of the League of Women Voters of the Fairfax Area.

The league has studied the issue, and it decided that restoring rights shouldn’t rest solely with the governor.

“We said there should be a process,” said Zachry, who lives in Woodbridge.

And, after the event, Whitmore said he would be comfortable with something similar. Perhaps a three-judge panel could be appointed to look at individual cases, he said.

Meanwhile, his friend and fellow Republican didn’t commit to one particular solution.

But Anderson did say that voting rights restoration doesn’t seem like something with which a governor would be tasked. He didn’t know the procedure until beginning to serve in the General Assembly.

“I was amazed,” he said.

Staff writer Jonathan Hunley can be reached at 703-369-5738.