Names of incumbents and their challengers won’t be the only thing on the ballot across the commonwealth this November; Virginians will also be asked to cast a yes or no vote on three proposed changes to the state constitution.
Those three amendments will seek to enshrine access to reproductive healthcare — including abortion — into Virginia’s constitution, remove a ban on same-sex marriage and affirm other marriage rights between two consenting adults, and restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people upon their release from prison.
To amend Virginia’s constitution, the General Assembly must approve an amendment twice, with an intervening election between the two votes. Then the amendment goes before the voters in a referendum.
Two of the three amendments, regarding marriage equality and access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, passed the General Assembly on party-line votes. The third constitutional amendment, regarding the automatic restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, saw a bit more bipartisan support but was also passed through a largely party-line vote.
Virginia voters will have the final say whether the constitutional amendments are enacted this November.
- Ballot question 1: Reproductive healthcare and abortion
- Ballot question 2: Marriage equality
- Ballot question 3: Restoration of voting rights
Ballot question 1: Reproductive healthcare and abortion
Voters will be asked the following question as it appears on the ballot:
Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to (i) protect the freedom to make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management, and fertility care; (ii) protect doctors, nurses, and patients from being punished for these decisions; and (iii) allow for restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester of pregnancy except when the patient’s health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive?
The current iteration of Virginia’s constitution does not explicitly provide a right to access reproductive healthcare, including abortion. It would also allow the state government to pass laws to regulate abortion care in the third trimester of pregnancy, but it would require any such law to allow for abortion care when medically needed to protect the life and health of the mother or because the fetus is not viable.
Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County, who patroned the amendment in the state Senate, said she has been working to protect access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, since she was in college. She shared in an interview that her motivation for championing the bill came from personal experience with a rare form of preeclampsia when she was pregnant with her second daughter.
“I nearly died, she nearly died. I was told I should never think about never having another baby again because it would likely kill me,” she said. “When we are talking about these debates, they become more about politics than about individuals. None of us in Richmond are going to be sitting at the bedside of a person whose life is at risk and we need to get doctors and patients in charge of their bodies and put the politics aside.”
She added that the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, puts access to reproductive healthcare at risk in the commonwealth. The proposed amendment would enshrine access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, in the constitution’s Bill of Rights.
“We’ve seen some pretty extreme bans in other states, and so our constitutional amendment adds a fundamental right to reproductive freedom. It protects decisions involving prenatal and postpartum care involving childbirth, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management and other fertility care,” she said. “It protects our freedom to make those decisions without fear of government interference or criminal punishment.
“We really based it on the current laws that we have on the books,” she added. “It lets us keep us where we are.”
The constitutional amendment has seen at least one legal challenge so far.
In March, Charla Bansley, a Bedford County supervisor, sued the clerk of the House of Delegates, Paul Nardo, and other Virginia election offices and officials, claiming that they hadn’t followed proper procedure when advancing the amendment to the ballot.
Bansley’s complaint sought an injunction to stop the amendment from proceeding to the ballot and asked a judge to rule that Nardo had failed to follow the rules. The lawsuit, which was filed in Bedford County Circuit Court, was dismissed by Judge John Cook in Campbell County Circuit Court in July. Bansley, represented by the Christian conservative Liberty Counsel, filed an appeal on Aug. 13.
At the center of the case is a now-repealed section of state code that had directed the clerk of the House to send copies of proposed amendments to circuit court clerks across the state and directed that proposed amendments be posted on the courthouse door and made available for inspection at every circuit court. The code was repealed by the General Assembly in February, when legislators advanced the three constitutional amendments.
The amendment is also seeing pushback on the campaign trail.
In a fundraising post on social media, former Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears announced the launch of a campaign tour to urge Virginians to vote “no” on ballot question one.
“It’s not what I’m against, it’s what I’m for,” Earle-Sears said in an interview. “What I’m trying to do simply is to go around and inform. The people will make a decision, I’m simply trying to give information — that’s what this is about.”
She pointed out that Republicans offered a couple of changes to the reproductive healthcare constitutional amendment when it was debated on the floor of the state Senate — which she presided over as lieutenant governor — during the 2026 legislative session: a “parental rights” clause that included a requirement for parents of a minor to be informed if their child is seeking abortion care and protections for a baby should it be born alive following an abortion. The “parental rights” amendment included unrelated language regarding gender-affirming healthcare for minors.
Those changes were voted down by the Democratic majority in the chamber.
“She has the right to speak out however she feels, that’s her constitutional right and I believe that we need to protect the freedom of speech in this country. But she and I are on completely different sides of this issue,” Boysko said of Earle-Sears’ campaign tour.
Locations for that tour were announced in August, but dates for most stops have yet to be set. So far, Earle-Sears tour includes a handful of Southwest Virginia stops, including Roanoke, Tazewell, Rocky Mount and Lynchburg.
Earle-Sears ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2025, where she was defeated by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger by a 15-point margin.
Ballot question 2: Marriage equality
The next question voters will be asked is the following, as it appears on the ballot:
Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to (i) remove the ban on same-sex marriage; (ii) affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race; and (iii) require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law?
Virginia’s constitution currently includes a ban on same-sex marriages, put in place when voters approved a 2006 constitutional amendment to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. That provision was overridden and rendered moot by the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015.
Through the Obergefell decision, the federal high court ruled 5-4 that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires states to recognize lawfully licensed marriages between two people of the same sex.
If the federal Obergefell decision were to be overturned, the ban on same-sex marriage in Virginia’s constitution could go back into effect.
Former Democratic state Sen. Adam Ebbin, who patroned the bill when he was in the state Senate, said concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the Obergefell decision were a part of his motivation for championing the legislation.
The constitutional amendment would remove the prohibition on marriages between persons of the same sex or gender from the Virginia Constitution’s Bill of Rights. That clause would be replaced with the fundamental right to marry and would require the state to recognize and treat equally under the law any lawful marriage between two adults, regardless of the sex, gender or race of either person. The proposed amendment would prohibit the state from denying a marriage license to two adults because of their sex, gender or race.
“The most important thing is that our constitution does not reflect the law of the land now. We certainly want to be consistent and have marriage available for all loving adults regardless of their gender, sex or race,” Ebbin said. “It’s not a radical change, it’s just bringing Virginia into the current status of the law of the land and updating our constitution.”
Earle-Sears’ campaign tour will also urge Virginians to vote “no” on this amendment.
“I’ve always said I support civil unions, that’s not an issue,” Earle-Sears said. “There are no protections for those who have deeply held religious beliefs.”
She pointed out another amendment offered by Republicans on the state Senate floor during the 2026 session, which would have provided protections for members of a church or clergy who don’t want to perform a marriage that goes against their religious beliefs. That change was also voted down by Democrats.
“Most Virginians support marriage for adults who are in committed relationships and they would reject her efforts to derail it — similarly to the way they rejected her campaign for governor because she’s not in the mainstream of Virginia,” Ebbin said when asked about Earle-Sears’ announced campaign tour against the amendment.
Ballot question 3: Restoration of voting rights
The last constitutional amendment to appear on the ballot this fall is the following:
Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended (i) to provide for the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, (ii) to revise the qualifications of voters so that a person convicted of a felony is not entitled to vote during his period of incarceration but is automatically invested with the right to vote upon release from incarceration, and (iii) to update the existing prohibition on voting by persons found to be mentally incompetent to instead apply to persons who have been found to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting?
Virginia’s constitution currently says that a person convicted of any felony loses the right to vote for the rest of their life unless the governor takes administrative action to restore that right. It also imposes a broad restriction on voting by people who were found to be incapacitated. A person who is determined by a court to be incapacitated, regardless of the kind of incapacity, loses the right to vote, and only a court can restore that right.
Under the proposed amendment, someone who is convicted of a felony automatically regains their right to vote after they are released from prison, without needing to appeal to the governor for restoration. The proposed amendment also requires a court to find that an incapacitated person does not understand the act of voting in order for their right to vote to be taken away.
Sen. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, D-Alexandria, patroned the amendment in the House of Delegates in 2025 and at the start of the 2026 session before she was elected to the state Senate. Bennett-Parker spent much of her career working with women who were formerly incarcerated, and that experience led her to carry the amendment.
She said that the current system of restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated people lacks transparency and changes every four years based on who is elected governor.
“No one returning from incarceration knows what steps they need to take to get their rights restored. It’s inconsistent and confusing,” she said. “This amendment makes a transparent, fair process that applies to everyone equally.”
The effort to restore voting rights to returning citizens has been a decades-long campaign by a number of lawmakers in the General Assembly, including Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, who carried the amendment in the state Senate.
House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, voted against the amendment during the 2026 General Assembly session. He said Monday that he agrees that the process of restoring voting rights needs to be reformed but disagrees with the way the amendment was written.
“The amendment that Democrats pushed through doesn’t serve justice. It lets a felon who is still on probation, still owes fines, who has paid victim restitution, get their rights back as soon as they’re physically out of prison,” Kilgore said. “They left several Republican votes on the table by not putting victims first.”
State Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, also voted against the amendment. He said he would have been in support of the measure if legislators had approved changes offered by Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County: limiting voting rights restoration to people who had been incarcerated on nonviolent offenses, requiring that restitution be paid to victims, and mandating that probation or parole be completed before voting rights are restored.
Aside from restoring voting rights, Bennett-Parker added that the amendment would strengthen protections for people with disabilities and ensure that their voting rights are lost only if a court says that a person is incapable of understanding the act of casting a ballot.
“Our current process is when a guardianship is set up, those under them lose their right to vote no matter the circumstances. Right now, for example, you could be deemed legally incompetent to manage a checkbook and you then inadvertently also lose your right to vote,” she pointed out.
