Two different views of Amendment 3, the restoration of rights amendment on Virginia’s ballot

Virginians are voting this fall on three proposed constitutional amendments. We asked groups on both sides of each question for an opinion piece making their case. Here are the pro and con arguments for Amendment 3, which would automatically restore civil rights to those convicted of felonies.

You can read the full language of the amendment here.

For more on this year’s election, see our Voter Guide.

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My right to vote came down to one person’s decision. That has to change.

By Irving Pervall

Gov. Abigail Spanberger recently announced she had restored the voting rights of 100,000 Virginians. I commend the governor for making rights restoration a priority and for giving so many returning citizens their voices back. 

Yet that power should not lie in the hands of any one politician, no matter what their party. By voting yes on The Right to Vote Amendment, which will be on the ballot as Question 3 this fall, Virginians can ensure that every person who has completed their sentence and returned to their community can get their voting rights back through a fair and consistent process.  

I believe in accountability. I did time for drug offenses, and I own my mistakes. No one else is to blame for my actions. But accountability should also mean that when your sentence is complete, you have a real opportunity to do right.

When I came home in 2019, I made a promise to God, my mother and my daughters that I was finished with my old life. 

It was not easy. I put in applications everywhere, but my record kept following me. Thankfully, my faith kept me going and I was eventually offered a job helping Virginians with felony convictions apply to have their voting rights restored. I accepted the job even though I did not yet have my own right to vote back.

I would go into neighborhoods and talk to people who assumed they could never vote again. One day, I was walking through Walmart when a big man came up, lifted me off the floor and spun me around. I did not recognize him at first. He told me I had helped him complete his restoration application. Then he said he had just voted for the first time.

That was one of the greatest moments of my life. I had helped another man reclaim his voice even while I was still waiting to reclaim my own.

Finally, in 2021, the commonwealth gave me my rights back. I have voted in every election since, and I intend to keep voting in every election. I still have the “I Voted” sticker from the first time on one of my jackets. The best way I can describe the feeling is this: I felt righteous.

I do not mean that I felt perfect or that my past had disappeared. I felt that I had done wrong, accepted the consequences and finally been recognized for doing right. I felt like I was part of my community again.

But that decision should never have depended on any one governor.

Under Virginia’s current constitution, people who have completed their sentences can remain barred from voting for life unless the governor chooses to restore their rights. One governor can open the door, and the next can close it. There is no universal process; it is literally up to the whims of one person who is in power at the time. That is not a fair or consistent way to treat a fundamental right.

This system is rooted in Virginia’s 1902 constitution, when political leaders deliberately sought to keep Black Virginians from voting. More than a century later, that provision lives on. 

This November, we have the power to change that by voting yes on Question 3.

Question 3 would establish a clear rule: Once someone completes their sentence, their voting rights are restored. No personal appeal to a governor. No system that changes from one administration to another. The same standard for everyone.

Question 3 is about believing people can be held accountable and still be given the chance to change. When people return home, we should want them working, caring for their families, serving their communities, and participating in our democracy. Restoring their right to vote tells them that doing right matters.

I know because it mattered to me.

But even if you don’t personally know any returning citizens, you will still be impacted by this amendment, as it creates a constitutional right to vote for every eligible Virginia voter. At a time when we are seeing increased attacks on our voting rights, including the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, this amendment will help ensure that politicians cannot interfere with any eligible voter’s access to the ballot box. 

Question 3 will be near the bottom of the ballot this November. You may even need to turn the page. Please do not skip it. Vote yes to protect your right to vote and to give Virginians who have completed their sentences the opportunity to feel what I felt when I cast my first ballot: Righteous.

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Restoration without restitution and elections without integrity: Vote no on Question 3 

“Remember to check under the hood.” “Once you scratch the surface…” “Does it pass the smell test?”

The English language is positively brimming with turns of phrase designed to remind us that judging a book by its cover — or, in this case, a law by its proponents’ oversimplified propaganda — may not be the wisest of decisions. Virginians would do well to remember those numerous cautionary catchphrases when it comes to voting on Question 3 on the ballot in November.  

Proponents of Question 3 insist it only lets people vote after they leave prison. But read the words they actually want inserted in the constitution:

“Every person who meets these qualifications shall have the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, and such right shall not be abridged by law, except that: (1) No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be entitled to vote during any period of incarceration for such felony conviction, but every such person, upon release from incarceration for that felony conviction and without further action required by him, shall be invested with all political rights, including the right to vote.”

Two phrases conceal the experimental nature of this amendment. 

“Without further action required by him” means no petition, no finished parole, and no check to see if the victim has been paid restitution. A man can leave a Virginia prison still owing restitution, still under supervision, and the same day be “invested with all political rights” — the vote, the jury box and public office. Felons on juries judging felony charges. 

In the absence of present incarceration or a court finding of incapacity, such rights cannot otherwise be restricted by laws. This is not a restoration policy. It is a constitutional command that the victim wait in line behind the offender. 

The unpaid judgment owed to a burglary victim, an embezzlement victim or a family awarded restitution for a violent felony is no longer a prerequisite to political power. The ballot language never directly tells you this.

And this proposal, as do the other two, goes much further than the proponents are willing to admit — “shall not be abridged by law” is the second command. This does not merely name who may vote. It limits how Virginia may run an election. The only exceptions written into the text are a prison sentence or the inability to understand the act of voting. Every other rule — photo identification on an absentee ballot, a witness signature on an absentee ballot envelope, a defined election day, a receipt deadline — becomes a law that can be challenged as an “abridgment” of a right the constitution now says may not be abridged.

This concern is real. In July 2020, plaintiffs in Stringer v. North Carolina, a lawsuit supported by the ACLU, asked a court to treat ordinary mail-ballot rules as unconstitutional barriers to the right to vote. Their complaint targeted the state’s failure to provide prepaid postage for absentee ballots, the deadline for receiving absentee ballots “which is untenable in light of…the United States Postal Services well-documented budgetary shortfalls,” the requirement that absentee ballots be signed before a witness, and the rejection of ballots for signature defects without a chance to “cure.” 

One plaintiff, a 23-year-old Harvard graduate, was “admittedly confused about how much postage her ballot requires” and had “to ask friends for postage or try to fit a trip to her local post office into her busy schedule.” Requiring voters to provide their own stamps for a mail-in ballot was actually framed as disenfranchisement.

If the aim of the amendment is simply to restore the voting rights of those who have served their time and paid their restitution, the proposed language would be simple: “the Commonwealth shall not discriminate against any person in the exercise of their right to vote on the basis of the conviction of a crime as long as said person has successfully completed their sentence and has paid any court ordered restitution.” 

The sponsors, however, did not choose this language. They chose something much different, and in doing so are experimenting with the commonwealth’s constitution.

A constitution is not a press release nor a laboratory. It is the one law we hand off to our children and grandchildren. If the aim were restoration after a completed sentence and paid restitution, the sponsors would have written that sentence. They wrote a different one, with a much broader and deeper meaning. Read what they wrote, not just what they say they wrote. Then vote no.