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McAuliffe Pushes Forward with Rights Restoration Despite Supreme Court Ruling

Associated Press

The Virginia Supreme Court may have overturned Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe’s executive order restoring voting rights to 200,000 former felons. But that’s not stopping him from moving forward with the plan.

McAuliffe tried to take action restoring the voting rights of all former felons, but the Supreme Court said he couldn’t do that — especially since his office refused to release the list naming all the former felons. So now he’s taking executive action on each and every individual case, a move Democratic Delegate Marcus Simon supports.

“The court said that you can’t do this en masse, that if you want to restore people’s rights you have to do it on an individual basis and so the governor is essentially complying with their request. He says he still wants to do it, and so he’s going to do it the way they say he has to."

But Corey Stewart disagrees. He’s the Republican chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors who’s chairman of the Trump campaign in Virginia and a candidate for governor next year. He says McAuliffe should be impeached. 

“If you’re the governor of the commonwealth and you’ve got no respect for the authority of the Virginia General Assembly and the Virginia Supreme Court, you’ve got no respect for the people of the state either."

The margin of victory between Obama and Romney was only 150,000 back in 2012, so adding 200,000 potential new voters to the rolls could be a decisive move…if they actually register to vote and show up at the ballot box.

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