Become a Restore Our Vote Activist!

More than 300,000 Virginians are unable to vote due to the state's felony disfranchisement law.

Sample Letter to the Editor

The following is a sample letter to the editor that you can submit to your local newspaper to help advocate for reform of Virginia's felony disfranchisement law. This letter is 263 words in length. This letter is provided as an example; please feel free to submit a letter in your own words. We would like to know if your letter gets published -- please contact us at vote@restoreourvote.org.

Dear Editor:

For the first time in many years the Virginia General Assembly seriously considered legislation to reform Virginia's shameful and unfair law that permanently disfranchises all former felons.  Most people, it seems, haven't even heard of this antiquated constitutional provision that prevents about 300,000 Virginia residents from voting.

Felon disfranchisement dates back to the Jim Crow era when it, poll taxes and literacy tests were used to keep minority voters out of polling places.  Once widespread throughout the U.S., harsh felon disfranchisement laws slowly died out over the course of the 20th Century.  Now, only Virginia and Kentucky still permanently disfranchise all persons convicted of a felony, requiring an individual act of the Governor to restore voting rights. 

Most of the disfranchised persons in Virginia are productive, tax-paying members of our society.  Not only do they deserve the right to vote now that they have repaid their debt to society, but studies indicate that formerly incarcerated persons who vote are about half as likely to commit another crime as those who don’t. 

Unfortunately, none of the several voter restoration reform bills introduced  in this year's General Assembly passed.

We must all now urge Governor Kaine to issue an executive order to automatically restore voting rights for all felons who have completed the terms of their sentence.  With not much more than a single stroke of his pen, he can create some real distance between Virginia and its racist past, while returning to hundreds of thousands of Virginians the right to participate in our democracy, which they earned when they repaid their debt to society.

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