We recently asked readers what they wanted to know as we set about covering this year’s elections. Some people had questions. Here are some answers.
Topics
1. Voter-led ballot initiatives
Why does Virginia not allow citizen-led ballot initiatives? Many states have seen tons of new people-led policies initiated by this democratic lever, but Virginia suppresses the ability of the residents to directly impact our governance in this way.
Andrew O’Brien, Roanoke
The short answer is because this is Virginia and Virginia has never believed in allowing too much democracy. In 1949, the political scientist V.O. Key Jr. (then teaching at Yale University), published a book on Southern politics in which he examined each state’s political culture. When he came to Virginia, he famously observed: “Mississippi, by contrast, is a hotbed of democracy.” His point: Politics in Virginia were tightly controlled. The idea of people to vote on something directly would have been anathema to the Byrd Machine. Keep in mind that this is a state that didn’t allow for elected school boards until the 1990s and where some localities — including Roanoke — still don’t have them.
More broadly, citizen-led ballot initiatives were a product of the Progressive Era in the early 1900s and took root mostly in the West, not the East. The politics of the West were more wide-open in those days than the politics back East. To this day, most states west of the Mississippi allow citizen-led ballot initiatives. Most states east of the Mississippi don’t.
As a result, there are very few issues in Virginia that are put directly on the ballot: Most referendums tend to be constitutional amendments and bond issues; those have to be initiated by the General Assembly or a local governing body. There are a few voter-led referendums that Virginia allows but only a few. Liquor-by-the-drink votes are the most common, although we don’t have any of those this year. We do, though, have voter-led referendums in both Amherst County and Pulaski County, where voters are deciding whether to allow off-track betting parlors.
Those are the historical reasons why Virginia doesn’t allow many voter-led ballot initiatives. To get such a system in Virginia would require a constitutional amendment; what you’d need is someone to introduce such a measure in the General Assembly, get it passed twice with an election in between, and then hope voters approve it in a referendum.
2. Wording of constitutional amendments
What is the approved wording of the three amendments and the effects of these amendments if they are passed?
Bea Morris, Rockingham County
The first part of this question is easy to answer; the second more open to interpretation.
You can find the ballot language and full text of the abortion/reproductive rights amendment here, the same-sex marriage amendment here, the restoration of rights amendment here.
For a more fulsome discussion of all these issues, I’ll refer you to the recent story by Cardinal’s Elizabeth Beyer that looked at the amendments.
The short version is that the first amendment would guarantee a right to an abortion in Virginia; this is in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned these issues to the states. What’s being debated is what exactly this right means in practical terms.
The purpose of the marriage amendment is to guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage. Didn’t the U.S. Supreme Court already decide this? you might ask. Yes, it did — but as we saw with Roe, the Supreme Court sometimes changes its mind. Virginians in 2006 approved an amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriages. The U.S. Supreme Court rendered that language moot, but it remains in the state constitution, dormant. Should the U.S. Supreme Court ever reverse itself on same-sex marriage, that provision would come back into force, so the purpose here is to a) remove that previous amendment and b) insert language to guarantee recognition of such marriages. In practical terms, this amendment wouldn’t change anything. It’s essentially an insurance policy against a future U.S. Supreme Court decision.
As for the restoration of rights amendment, Virginia is one of just two states that doesn’t automatically restore civil rights (including the right to vote) to convicted felons once they’ve served their time. Felons who want their rights restored must apply to the governor, and some governors have been more generous about those restorations than others. This amendment would make such restorations automatic. The debate here is whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Nobody asked how many felons who have their rights restored actually bother to vote. I’ve not been able to find any solid statistics, but I ran through some math in a previous column and concluded that, on a percentage basis, it’s not many.
3. Wording of Amendment 1
Why does the referendum use the term “pregnant person”?
No name given, Spotsylvania County
Umm, it doesn’t, really.
The ballot question reads: “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 Department of Elections’ summary of the amendment does refer to “the life and health of the pregnant person” but that’s not part of the ballot question or the amendment itself. Maybe that’s “woke” or maybe that’s just bureaucratic language, which has never exactly been Shakespeare. Ultimately, of the three things — the ballot question, the summary on the state’s website, the actual amendment — the only one that really matters is what the amendment says. That’s what will be in force if the amendment passes and then get litigated if there are disagreements. I wouldn’t get distracted by anything else.
4. Restoration of rights process
What’s the difference between the November ballot measure and what [Gov. Abigail] Spanberger just did allowing like 60,000 ex-felons to be able to vote? I’m confused.
No name given, Roanoke
The state’s current constitution requires the governor to approve all applications to restore the civil rights of convicted felons — that’s what Spanberger recently did. The amendment would make that automatic; thus no gubernatorial action would be required in the future.
5. How ballot questions are written
Why is Spanberger allowed to form questions on the ballots that are misleading? She and Democrats should not be the ones writing these questions. … It should be a panel of citizens who truly want to know what the real question is.
No name given, Prince William County
Don’t blame the governor for this, but you can blame the General Assembly — or the Code of Virginia that gives the General Assembly the power to write the ballot language. For what it’s worth, the language for the three amendments on the ballot this fall seems pretty neutral to me — but the language for the redistricting amendment earlier this year plainly wasn’t. David M. Poole wrote about this in a story in Cardinal back in February. He looked through 45 previous constitutional amendments and found only one that had seemed to stray from neutrality until the more controversial redistricting amendment.
Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County, introduced a bill this year to set up a Fairness Commission to write ballot language. It would have established a nine-member commission composed of four proponents, four opponents and one neutral member to write the language. That measure never made it out of the House Privileges and Elections Committee.
I realize I’m being idealistic here, but I wouldn’t put much stock in the ballot language. Voters need to read the amendments themselves. I know most don’t, and won’t, but we’re not voting on ballot language, we’re voting on the full language of the proposed amendment.
6. Better representation
How do we get better representation in Richmond?
Sue Ellen Tate, Bland County
I don’t mean to be flip but this year you won’t — because there are no state offices on the ballot, only local ones or ones in Washington. The only exception is one House of Delegates seat in Manassas, Manassas Park and part of Prince William County where there’s a special election underway.
As for the full meaning of the question, this reader and others may not like the answer I’m about to give because it requires some work on their part: If you really want to influence who’s going to Richmond, you ought to get involved in a political party. Some of the most important decisions in politics involve who gets nominated for office; that typically happens months or even years before a general election. If someone is waiting until the fall election, a lot of choices have already been made for you — your options have been narrowed to whoever is on the ballot.
If you don’t like who’s winning, that’s a harder question to answer. I don’t know this reader’s politics, and don’t really want to know, but let’s work with what we know from election returns. Bland County is a strongly Republican county — Bland voted 84.33% Republican in the 2024 presidential election and 81.64% Republican in last year’s governor’s race. In both cases, the Democratic candidate won statewide.
If a Republican voter in Bland County is unhappy with those results, then the question becomes how can that voter persuade Republicans to nominate candidates more likely to win statewide, which in practical terms means getting a bigger share of the vote in Northern Virginia than many Republicans get. To be honest, any single party activist has a very limited say in who the statewide candidates are but would have more say than the rest of us.
If a Democratic voter in Bland County is unhappy with who Bland is sending to Richmond, then Bland Democrats need to somehow persuade more of their neighbors to vote Democratic.
If a Republican voter in Bland is unhappy with who the county is sending to Richmond, then that voter needs to persuade Republicans to nominate someone else.
All these involve work. If voters sit back and wait for either party to do whatever it’s inclined to do, well, then you’re stuck with the options they come up with. Democracy is the hardest form of government because it requires ordinary people to get involved in politics. By getting involved, I don’t mean commenting on social media posts. I mean going to party meetings, volunteering for campaigns and, yes, giving money.
7. Proof of citizenship
I’m confused as to why people would be against proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
No name given, Franklin County
I’ll try not to wade too deep into the politics on this but I’ll take a stab at the practical side of things. How does someone prove they’re a citizen? If you’ve been naturalized, you’ve got those papers. That covers 7.7% of the American population.
Most people aren’t naturalized citizens, though. For those people to prove they’re citizens, you’d either need to present a birth certificate or a passport (which requires a birth certificate to obtain). Only about half of American adults have a passport, which means the other half or so would need to show up with their birth certificate. How many have theirs?
In Virginia, the cost to get a copy of your birth certificate is $15, or $17 if you go through the Department of Motor Vehicles. If you have to pay money for a document to register to vote, that gets awfully close to feeling like a poll tax, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in 1966.
Virginia’s on the low side of birth certificate costs, by the way. Michigan charges $34. There’s also the turnaround time. Virginia is on the speedy side of things — two to four weeks. For someone who lives in Virginia now but was born in another state — which is about half of Virginia adults — the wait time is longer. A random sample from Vital Records Online: New York takes about 10 to 12 weeks. North Carolina can also take up to 12 weeks. What would the wait times be if more people were requesting these documents?
If we were to start this policy from scratch, who would be most disadvantaged? Rural voters, who tend to vote Republican. A study by the American Communities Project found that passport rates were highest among those who live in suburbs (and who tend to vote Democratic) and lowest among evangelical voters (who tend to vote Republican). Those are the ones who would need to send off to get a copy of their birth certificates and then trust government agencies to process those requests quickly.
If we look on a state-by-state basis, nine of the 10 states with the highest percentage of passport holders are Democratic states (Alaska is the exception), while the 10 lowest are all Republican-voting states. The effect of requiring a passport or birth certificate to register could have the effect of making some of those Republican-voting states more Democratic, at least temporarily, because many Republican voters may have difficulty getting the paperwork in time.
Maybe there are people opposed to requiring proof of citizenship as a requirement to register for other reasons — I can’t speak to that — but these are the practical implications of such a policy.
Cardinal sent an issues questionnaire to every candidate in the state. You can see how they answered (if they did) on our Voter Guide. If you have a question you think I can answer, let me know at dwayne@cardinalnews.org and I’ll start compiling another list. For more political news, sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Fridays. I’ll be updating the early voting numbers and recapping the week’s campaign action there.
