Virginia Democrats Woo the Felon Vote with Proposed Constitutional Amendment
With support from top Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Jay Jones.
A proposed amendment to Virginia's constitution would automatically grant voting rights to felons, part of a nationwide push by the Left to curry favor with—and earn votes from—ex-criminals.
Under current Virginia law, criminals permanently lose their voting rights after a felony conviction and must have their rights restored by the governor. The amendment, introduced as a bill by House Democrats, would restore all felons' voting rights immediately after finishing their prison sentence. To go into effect, the bill must pass both houses during two General Assembly sessions, at which point it would go before voters on the November 2026 ballot.
Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat running for governor this year, has praised the amendment. "I'm glad to see the VA House of Delegates move forward a constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated Virginians," she tweeted in January, later calling it "real progress."
Jay Jones, the ex-delegate running for Attorney General, introduced a similar bill to restore felon voting rights in 2021 (HJ 546) and later voted for a similar bill incorporating his own legislation. In 2023, Jones also represented the left-wing NAACP in arguing for a rights restoration pipeline under the Youngkin administration.
Other Democrats in competitive House districts voted for the amendment, among them the radical pro-abortion pastor Joshua Cole (HD-65, Stafford), Michael Feggans (HD-97, Virginia Beach), Josh Thomas (HD 21, Chesapeake), and Nadarius Clark (HD-84, Franklin).
(DEEP-DIVE: The Left Mines For Votes in America’s Prisons)
Mining for Votes
Felon re-enfranchisement is an issue rarely discussed on the Right, in part because it's thorny.
Virginia has barred felons from voting for nearly two centuries, beginning in 1830. That's when most states began restricting felon voting rights. While leftists have framed it as a Jim Crow relic, the idea of "civil death"—losing civil rights as a punishment for committing a crime—is rooted in far older Roman, Greek, English, and medieval law. Nor is it always controversial; very few object when courts curtail the rights of individuals deemed mentally incompetent to live alone or vote.
In contrast, re-enfranchisement is a hot new "civil rights" issue only recently adopted by the Left… and even then, selectively. While they want to restore voting rights, top Democrats have blasted GOP efforts to restore felons' gun rights. Countless Democrats and litigation groups also tried to stop Donald Trump from retaking public office after his 2024 felony conviction, or strip him from the ballot in their states over bogus "insurrection" charges.
Restoration News has traced the explosion in felon voting rights restoration initiatives in blue states, signaling Democrats' eagerness to court the ex-felon vote—which may be as large as 18 million people. House Democrats' failed 2022 John R. Lewis Act would have also automatically granted voting rights to all felons after release.
Like most of the Left's election "reforms," re-enfranchisement is the brainchild of professional activists at the Brennan Center for Justice, a radical group heavily funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation. For years, these organizations have battled for laws they believe will increase voter turnout under the assumption that high election turnout yields Democrat victories.
As a result, felons may vote inside prison while serving their sentences in Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, which is one objective of these campaigns.
In almost all cases, leftist groups want felons to vote in the states they're serving time in, not the states where they were arrested. Coincidentally, many federal prisons are located in conservative southern states like Texas.
However, the push to restore felon voting rights may ultimately backfire on Democrats as they lose support among working class and minority voters, many of whom increasingly identify with President Trump following his absurd criminal conviction on the 2024 campaign trail. At the same time, turnout assumptions are evolving—now it's Republicans, not Democrats, who tend to benefit from high election turnout from low-propensity voters.
(CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: Saving Virginia with Jason Miyares | Restoration Spotlight)
