State and National Government
The House of Delegates has approved a bill designed to award Virginia electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote — not Virginia’s. Virginia Tech Professor Bob Denton says the state should not cede its presidential vote impact to larger states like New York and California, but does support awarding Virginia’s electoral votes by Congressional district. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The House of Delegates passed a bill this week that would allocate the commonwealth’s electoral college votes to the candidate who received the national popular vote.
The bill would join Virginia into the National Popular Vote Compact, which ensures the presidential candidate with the most votes nationally is elected once states comprising 270 out of 538 electoral votes sign onto the pact. The House passed the bill by a vote of 51-46.
Passage of House Bill 177, introduced by Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, comes less than two weeks after the bill was originally defeated in the Privileges and Elections committee by a vote of 10-12. After being reconsidered in the same committee last week, the bill reported out on a 12-9 vote. Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, and Del. Alex Askew, D-Virginia Beach, who initially voted against the bill voted in favor of it the second time. Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler, D-Virginia Beach, who initially also voted against the bill did not vote the second time.
The bill incorporates HB 199, introduced by Del. Marcia Price, D-Newport News.
“The people of the United States should choose the president of the United States, no matter where they live in each individual state,” Levine said when questioned during the committee hearing. “It gives every American equal weight under the law.”
Levine tried to pass similar legislation the past three consecutive sessions.
A similar Senate bill, introduced by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, was pulled from consideration by Ebbin, who did not identify the reason he pulled the bill.
Since the campaign began in 2006, 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed the National Popular Vote bill — a total of 196 electoral votes. If the bill passes the state Senate, Virginia’s 13 electoral votes would bring that total to 209. That leaves 61 electoral votes needed for the compacte to take effect. At least one chamber in eight additional states, with a combined 75 more electoral votes, have passed the bill.
“We are grateful to our sponsors in the Virginia General Assembly, and to citizens across the state who are making it clear that they prefer a national popular vote for president,” said John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, in a released statement.
A candidate winning the electoral votes and the presidential race despite losing the national popular vote has occurred five times in American history: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harris in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.
“It is really hard to predict how campaigns would respond to this change,” said Alex Keena, assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “We would probably see less campaigning in the smaller swing states and there would be less emphasis on winning states, per se.”
The bill stipulates that a state can exit the compact, but a withdrawal occurring six months or less before the end of a president’s term shall not become effective until a president or vice president have been qualified to serve the next term.
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This article was provided to The Associated Press by Virginia Commonwealth University Capital News Service.
Virginia’s minimum wage appears more likely than ever head upward in the next few years. A proposal to lift it to $15 an hour by 2025 passed the House of Delegates yesterday. Supporters say it will help lower-wage earners; opponents say it result in fewer jobs for them. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Local Virginia governments may soon have the power to remove Confederate monuments in their public spaces under legislation approved Tuesday by state lawmakers.
On Tuesday, largely along party lines, the Democrat-led House and Senate passed measures that would give cities and counties the autonomy to “remove, relocate, contextualize, cover or alter” the monuments in their public spaces.
Del. Delores McQuinn, a Democrat from Richmond who sponsored the House bill, said it would let local communities decide for themselves “how they want to memorialize history, whether it’s right in your face or they want to memorialize it in another way.”
Del. Jay Jones, who is black, said in a speech Monday that many of the monuments were erected in the 20th century, decades after the Civil War had ended and during the “throes of Jim Crow.” He said people in Norfolk, his district, overwhelmingly want a “Johnny Reb” statue removed from a downtown square.
“Every time I drive past it — which is every day to get to my law office — my heart breaks a little bit,” he said.
The measures’ opponents, who compare removing Confederate monuments to erasing history, have raised concerns that the legislation could lead to a push to take down memorials to other controversial conflicts, such as the Vietnam War.
“I do not believe this will end well,” said Republican Del. Charles Poindexter, who added that the bill sent a “tough message” to every veteran or dead veteran’s family.
Each chamber advanced different versions of the legislation. The House and Senate may next conform the language of the bills to match or advance them to a conference committee that will work out the differences.
The Senate’s bill imposes several hurdles not included in the House version that a local government must take before removing a monument. Under the measure, local leaders must first pass a resolution stating its intention to remove the monument, then request a report from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources with background about the person depicted and the circumstances under which the monument was established.
The locality would then have to make that report public and then hold a public hearing before it could vote. A decision to remove a monument would require a 2/3 vote or could be sent to voters for a referendum.
Under both the House and Senate bills, the locality would have to offer the monument to a “museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield” for a period of 30 days, though both measures say the local government has the “sole authority” to determine its final disposition.
Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam said at the start of this year’s legislative session that he supports lifting the existing prohibition on the removal of Confederate war memorials. He also said he backs a measure advancing through both chambers that lays out a process for removing a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that Virginia contributed to the U.S. Capitol grounds.
That legislation, which establishes a commission that would recommend a prominent Virginian who could replace Lee as one of the state’s two contributions in the National Statuary Hall Collection, passed the Senate on Monday and the House on Tuesday.
After the 2017 white supremacist rally, which was convened in part to protest Charlottesville’s attempt to remove a statue of Lee from a downtown park, many places around the country quickly started taking Confederate monuments down. The event descended into chaos and a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd, killing a woman and injuring dozens more.
But in Virginia, a state that was home to two Confederate capitals, localities were hamstrung by the existing law.
Charlottesville, which later also sought to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, has been fighting the issue in court. A judge prevented the city from even covering the Lee statue with tarps amid the litigation.
Charlottesville is encouraged by the progress on the legislation, city spokesman Brian Wheeler said.
“Should legislation be signed by the Governor, the City will identify the procedural steps it needs to complete in order to remove the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from its public parks,” Wheeler wrote in an email.
Other city governments that have signaled their intent to remove a Confederate monument include Alexandria, Portsmouth and Norfolk, which voted to move the “Johnny Reb” statue to a cemetery and has also sued over the law. In Richmond, where a commission convened by the mayor recommended removing one of five Confederate statues along the city’s famed Monument Avenue, the City Council passed a resolution last month asking the General Assembly for local control.
One of those five statues, a soaring tribute to Lee, is state property. Northam has said there’s an “ongoing discussion” about that statue’s future, though his office has declined to answer further questions.
One week after President Trump’s State of the Union address, a lawmaker from our area is echoing some of those achievements as what he calls a “blue-collar boom.” WFIR’s Ian Price has more:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia is moving toward decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana.
The state House on Monday passed a decriminalization bill with bipartisan support. The state Senate is expected to pass its own version shortly. Gov. Ralph Northam has signaled his support for the measure.
If passed, the legislation would scrap criminal charges for possessing marijuana and replace them with small fines.
Supporters have argued the measure is needed in part because African Americans are disproportionately charged with drug crimes. A measure to legalize marijuana failed earlier this year.
Members of the Asian American Business Owners Association based in Roanoke say they “absolutely agree” that Virginia’s minimum wage is “long overdue” for an increase – but they also say the 15 dollars an hour proposed over the next 5 years is too much. More from WFIR’s Gene Marrano:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Lawmakers are closing a legal loophole that could charge unmarried people with a crime for having consensual sex. The House of Delegates passed a bill this week that aims to repeal the crime of fornication, which makes it illegal for people to have consensual sex outside of marriage.
Currently, fornication is a Class 4 misdemeanor and carries a fine of up to $250.
Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, introduced House Bill 245 to repeal what he called a Victorian-era law. The Virginia Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 2005.
Levine said the bill was necessary because keeping unconstitutional laws on the books can cause confusion.
“No one should think they can be prosecuted for this common practice,” Levine said.
The lawmaker added that people are rarely convicted for fornication, but it can be charged in conjunction with other crimes such as indecent exposure.
“Charge the crime that occurred, don’t just pile on with things that shouldn’t be a crime anyway,” Levine said.
The bill received bipartisan support on the floor. The seven votes against it came from Republican lawmakers. One Democrat abstained.
“Now that the Democrats are in power, I’m thrilled to get it off the books,” Levine said.
Levine pointed out that this is a crime a majority of Virginians have probably committed at some point in their life.
“It’s a stupid law. It’s crazy,” Levine said.
This is Levine’s second attempt to repeal the law, and the third by Democrats since 2014.
“I had that fornication bill before, it couldn’t get out of committee. The world has changed,” Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, said Thursday from the House floor. Sickles introduced the bill that failed in 2014.
Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin said she was unaware of anyone in the city being charged in years with fornication on top of other crimes. When asked how many fornication convictions there were in 2019, the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office did not have any records to report. There were eight convictions of fornication in 2013, a lawmaker told The Virginian-Pilot in 2014.
JoAnne Sweeny, a University of Louisville law professor who has written about fornication and adultery laws, said most people don’t think about being charged with fornication. That doesn’t change its status as a criminal act.
“In the U.S., if it’s on the books, it’s enforceable,” Sweeny said.
Fornication is part of Virginia law that outlines crimes involving morals and decency.
Sweeny said fornication law in the United States dates back to Colonial times and was enforced in the 1960s, with a sharp dropoff in enforcement in the 1980s.
Levine believes most Virginians, even those who don’t agree with sex outside of marriage, want this bill to become law.
“How is Virginia for lovers, if lovers can’t love each other,” Levine said.
The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.
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This article was provided to The Associated Press by Virginia Commonwealth University Capital News Service.
