RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – The Virginia Supreme Court will meet Tuesday to hear arguments in a Republican lawsuit trying to block more than 200,000 former felons in the state from voting in November.
At issue in the case is whether the state’s constitution allows governors to restore voting rights to ex-felons en masse or requires them to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Republican lawmakers who sued McAuliffe say the governor clearly violated the constitution and ignored decades of practice with his April executive order. McAuliffe says he’s confident he’s on firm legal ground. But he has said he will restore all roughly 206,000 former felons’ political rights individually if he has to.
As of July 11, 9,500 ex-felons whose rights were restored by the governor since April 22 had registered to vote.
