This story was reported and written by VPM News.
The number of Virginians who have had their voting rights restored by Gov. Glenn Youngkin after completing their felony sentences has dropped every year since he took office in 2022.
Youngkin rolled back the automatic restoration process used by his three most recent predecessors, instead evaluating applications from people seeking to have their rights restored on a case-by-case basis.
The shift has drawn scrutiny — and at least one federal lawsuit.
Youngkin restored the rights of 1,641 people from Jan. 17, 2024, through Jan. 16, according to an annual report the secretary of the commonwealth is required to share.
Previous reports show Youngkin restored the rights of more than 2,600 people over the same period the previous year, and more than 4,300 in his first year in office.
“It continues to seem like this governor is picking and choosing his voters, and no governor should get to do that,” Shawn Weneta, a legislative liaison for The Humanization Project, told VPM News.
Virginia is the only U.S. state that permanently strips a person’s rights to vote, serve on a jury, be a public notary and run for public office for a felony conviction unless the governor restores them, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Most of Youngkin’s first-year rights restorations came under an expedited process started by former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and expanded by Democratic successors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam.
McDonnell automatically restored voting rights to nonviolent offenders who completed their sentences and probation or parole, paid their court costs and finished all court-ordered conditions.
After the Virginia Supreme Court overturned McAuliffe’s blanket executive order that would have restored rights to 206,000 people, he used a streamlined process to individually restore them for more than 173,000 people.
Northam then removed a requirement that people must complete parole before they can get their rights back. He restored rights to more than 126,000 Virginians during his time in office.
Youngkin restored rights to nearly 3,500 people in his first four months in office, his administration announced in May 2022.
Kay Coles James, the former secretary of the commonwealth, told VPM News at the time that the administration would mostly keep the process that his predecessors used.
But during the following five months, Youngkin’s office said he granted just over 800 restorations.
“We're continuing to see a steep decline in rights restorations by this administration with little to no explanation for why that is,” Weneta said. “We also don't know what the criteria is still, even though we've been asking what the criteria is for a couple of years.”
Youngkin’s press secretary did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.
Stripping people’s rights after criminal convictions goes back to the state’s 1902 constitution, which was used to disenfranchise Black voters in Virginia.
An estimated 4 million Americans didn’t have the right to vote in 2024 because of a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project.
State Democrats have pursued a change to the Virginia constitution that would automatically restore people’s civil rights after they serve their sentences for felony convictions. And during the 2025 legislative session, the General Assembly passed a proposed constitutional amendment to do that — garnering some Republican support.
The resolution needs to pass the Legislature again during the 2026 session before it can go to voters in November 2026 as a statewide ballot question.
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