MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to Virginia, which has been one of the toughest places for someone convicted of a felony to reclaim their voting rights. There, the governor decides who gets those rights back after they get out of prison. Virginians are voting on a measure that would take the issue out of the governor's hands. Jahd Khalil from VPM News reports.
JAHD KHALIL, BYLINE: Amber Bowman (ph) needs a little help voting. It's her first time casting a ballot since she went to prison.
AMBER BOWMAN: I feel like I'm a teenager, just turning 18, getting my voting rights for the first time.
KHALIL: Bowman is 38 and last voted about two decades ago. She was one of about 250,000 Virginia residents who couldn't vote because of a conviction until her voting rights were restored by Governor Abigail Spanberger. Now Bowman and others in Virginia are voting on changing the state Constitution to automatically restore voting rights of those convicted of felonies.
BOWMAN: Well, I think if you've served your sentence, why shouldn't you get your rights restored? Like, why is it a life sentence in Virginia if you get a felony conviction?
KHALIL: Virginia's practice traces back to the Jim Crow era. In 1902, delegates rewrote the constitution Virginia used to rejoin the Union. They sought to remove Reconstruction-era protections for Black Virginians. Nicole Porter is senior director of advocacy with The Sentencing Project, which supports making rights restoration automatic.
NICOLE PORTER: The constitutional record from the early 1900s was clear in terms of the intent to disenfranchise Black electorate, using felony disenfranchisement to dilute Black political power.
KHALIL: The debate over voting as a consequence of breaking the law often focuses on criminal justice arguments instead of the history. But Porter says keeping people from voting is bad public safety policy.
PORTER: And we know that people who have prior felony convictions, who do vote, who do participate in their community, who do have stable housing, who do have stable employment, are less likely to reoffend and less likely to return to prison.
KHALIL: The amendment wouldn't just change who can cast a ballot. Unless voting rights are restored, people who were convicted of a felony can't serve on a jury, run for office or work the election polls. Porter says those are key parts of being in the community. But critics of the proposed amendment say that it's best to assess whether a person has been rehabilitated on a case-by-case basis. Sandra Alcaide is a law professor at Regent University.
SANDRA ALCAIDE: When an individual has broken the law and then gets to vote on the law after they've broken the law, in a serious manner, you know, there's this idea of should that person be able to automatically vote on something that they didn't really have much regard for initially?
KHALIL: The debate over the amendment was also thrown a curveball. A federal judge said that Virginia was breaking a 19th century law that limited which crimes would disenfranchise a voter, and that about 235,000 people should have been able to vote all along. The state now says only people convicted of murder and manslaughter would need to apply for their voting rights. Yet proponents of the amendment say voting rights need a more durable safeguard than a court ruling, proponents like Democratic state Senator Mamie Locke.
MAMIE LOCKE: It's evolving the Virginia Constitution to declare that Virginia's democracy is alive and well and that it belongs to everybody, even those who have been imprisoned and have served their time and are being reintegrated into society.
KHALIL: Back at her polling location, Amber Bowman is about to finally vote again.
BOWMAN: So I've worked really hard since I came from incarceration, and just being able to get my voting rights back, it feels like, OK, people are letting me move past this conviction.
KHALIL: She says steps like these help people like her to come home from incarceration and not go back. She said voting was easy once she got in the door.
For NPR News, I'm Jahd Khalil in Richmond, Virginia.
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