Constitutional Amendment · Question 3
Vote YesThe Right to Vote
The ballot question
This is the exact language you will see on your ballot:
Question 3
Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended (i) to provide for the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, (ii) to revise the qualifications of voters so that a person convicted of a felony is not entitled to vote during his period of incarceration but is automatically invested with the right to vote upon release from incarceration, and (iii) to update the existing prohibition on voting by persons found to be mentally incompetent to instead apply to persons who have been found to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting?
What Virginia's constitution says now
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia currently provides:
No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote unless his civil rights have been restored by the Governor or other appropriate authority.
As prescribed by law, no person adjudicated to be mentally incompetent shall be qualified to vote until his competency has been reestablished.
Read that first sentence carefully. In Virginia, a felony conviction takes away your vote for life — not for the length of your sentence. The only way to get it back is for one person, the sitting governor, to grant it to you individually.
Virginia is one of only three states whose constitution works this way. And it is the only one where a single official decides, case by case, for every single person.
What Question 3 would put in its place
[Qualified voters] shall have the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, and such right shall not be abridged by law, except that:
No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote during any period of incarceration for such felony conviction, but every such person, upon release from incarceration for that felony conviction and without further action required of him, shall be invested with all political rights, including the right to vote.
No person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting shall be qualified to vote during such period of incapacity until his capacity has been reestablished as prescribed by law.
Three changes: it establishes an affirmative fundamental right to vote in Virginia's Bill of Rights for the first time; it ends lifetime disenfranchisement, restoring rights automatically on release with no application and no governor's signature; and it replaces the blanket "mentally incompetent" bar with a narrow one that applies only to a person a court has found unable to understand the act of voting.
The full text is available from the Virginia Department of Elections.
Why Virginia has this rule
The lifetime ban is not an accident of drafting. It is a deliberate inheritance from Jim Crow.
Felony disenfranchisement entered Virginia's constitution in 1830. In 1876, an amendment added petit larceny to the list — a petty theft offense, added because white politicians understood that Black Virginians could readily be convicted of it. The 1902 constitution, written by a convention that said openly what it was doing, swept in a long list of offenses alongside a poll tax and a literacy test. Black voter registration in Virginia collapsed from roughly 147,000 to 21,000 within months.
Virginia's 1971 constitution removed the poll tax and the literacy test — provisions the federal courts and Congress had already struck down through the 24th Amendment in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections in 1966. But the felony ban stayed, rewritten into the language still in force today.
Virginia's prison population then grew from about 8,900 people in 1980 to more than 30,000 by 2000, driven by the drug-war buildup of the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1994, Virginia abolished parole effective January 1, 1995, requiring people to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. Long sentences meant long disenfranchisement.
As of 2024, roughly 264,000 Virginians — 4.2 percent of the voting-age population — were barred from voting because of a felony conviction, against a national rate of 1.7 percent. About one in ten Black voting-age Virginians was disenfranchised, three and a half times the rate for other Virginians.
What changed in September 2026 — and why this vote still matters
In September 2026, a federal court ordered Virginia to stop applying its lifetime ban so broadly. In King v. Youngkin, Judge John A. Gibney Jr. held that the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870 — a Reconstruction-era federal statute — allows Virginia to disenfranchise people only for the felonies recognized at common law in 1870. On September 15, the Virginia Department of Elections issued guidance cutting the list of disqualifying crimes down to three: murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter. The ACLU estimates that roughly 90 percent of previously disenfranchised Virginians are now eligible to register.
That is a major victory. It is not a substitute for Question 3, for four reasons:
- Nothing in Virginia law has changed. Article II, Section 1 still says a felony conviction is a permanent bar unless the governor acts. The court did not rewrite Virginia's constitution — it enjoined the Commonwealth from enforcing it fully, under a federal statute that remains subject to further litigation.
- The governor's discretion survives. So does the possibility that a future administration approaches this differently.
- Jury service, holding office, and serving as a notary are still barred. The court ruling addressed voter registration only. Under Va. Code § 8.01-338, a felony conviction still disqualifies you from a jury unless the governor has restored your civil rights.
- A court order is not a constitution. Question 3 is the durable version.
What advocates say
“This should never have been in the hands of one individual. This takes away the authority of one person's emotions.”
“I want to set a precedent for my kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews. I can't tell them to go out and vote if I can't do it myself.”
“Today's action is an important step forward, but it cannot be the final step. A future governor should never be able to reverse a fundamental right with the stroke of a pen.”
“My faith teaches me that people make mistakes, and they can be redeemed from those mistakes and become, in this case, contributing members to society again. It's become a partisan issue that I don't think should be a partisan issue.”
“The NAACP urges every Virginia voter to vote YES on the Voting Rights Constitutional Amendment for Automatic Restoration of Rights on November 3rd and make this permanent.”
“This fall, voters can cast their ballots for Virginia to no longer strip so many of our neighbors of their fundamental rights — a shameful relic of our Jim Crow past.”
“No one returning from incarceration knows what steps they need to take to get their rights restored. It's inconsistent and confusing.”
Frequently asked questions
1.Didn't a federal court already fix this in September?
It fixed a great deal of it, but it is not permanent.
The September 2026 ruling in King v. Youngkin rests on the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870, a federal statute. It bars Virginia from disenfranchising people for anything beyond the felonies recognized at common law in 1870, which in practice means murder and manslaughter. Roughly nine out of ten previously disenfranchised Virginians can now register.
But Virginia's constitution is unchanged. It still says a felony conviction is a lifetime bar unless the governor restores your rights, and that text will stay there until voters remove it. A court order can be appealed, narrowed, or distinguished in a later case. A constitutional amendment cannot be undone by a judge or a governor — only by the voters themselves.
2.Would this let people vote from prison?
No. The amendment is explicit: a person convicted of a felony "shall not be qualified to vote during any period of incarceration." Rights return on release, not before.
3.What about people still on probation or parole, or who still owe fines or restitution?
Under Question 3, rights return upon release from incarceration, regardless of whether a person is still on supervision or still owes court debt.
Conditioning the vote on paying money is a poll tax by another name, and people on probation are living and working in their communities, paying taxes, and raising children there. Someone who is out of prison, back at work, and driving their kids to school is a member of the community, and the community's decisions affect them.
4.Does this apply to people convicted of murder or other violent crimes?
Yes. Question 3 draws the line at incarceration rather than at the type of offense. Once a person has completed their prison sentence, their vote returns.
That is a real choice and worth stating plainly. The argument for it is that a sentence is the punishment a court decided was proportionate; a lifetime loss of citizenship is a second sentence no judge imposed. As Del. Mike Cherry, a Republican, put it: "I don't think we should impose lifetime restrictions and punishments on people when the courts did not deem it necessary to give them a life sentence."
5.What is the mental competency change about?
Virginia's constitution currently disqualifies anyone "adjudicated to be mentally incompetent," and only a court can restore that right. That sweeps in people under guardianship for reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to vote — an adult with a developmental disability, for instance, or an older Virginian whose finances are managed by a relative.
Question 3 narrows it to a person a court has specifically found to "lack the capacity to understand the act of voting." It is a targeted fix, and it is the least-discussed part of the amendment.
6.Does this affect jury service?
Yes, and this is one of the clearest reasons the amendment still matters after the September court ruling.
Under Va. Code § 8.01-338, a felony conviction disqualifies you from jury service, and only a grant of restoration of civil rights by the governor lifts that bar. The court ruling addressed voter registration and did not touch jury eligibility. The amendment's text restores "all political rights," and the General Assembly has already passed companion legislation removing the felony disqualification from the jury statute — legislation that takes effect January 1, 2027 only if Question 3 passes.
This matters beyond the individual. Virginia builds its jury lists from voter registration lists together with driver's license lists (Va. Code § 8.01-345). A trial by a jury of your peers depends on those lists reflecting the whole community.
7.Why not just leave this to the governor?
Because the result has been wildly inconsistent, depending entirely on who holds the office.
Gov. Bob McDonnell restored rights to about 8,000 Virginians. Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored more than 173,000 — after the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down his 2016 blanket order in Howell v. McAuliffe, holding that Virginia's constitution requires the governor to act person by person, so he rebuilt the process and signed them individually. Gov. Ralph Northam restored more than 126,000. Gov. Glenn Youngkin ended the streamlined process his predecessors had used, moved to individual case-by-case review, and restored fewer than 10,000 over four years. Gov. Abigail Spanberger restored more than 66,000 in her first six months.
A right that expands and contracts with each election is not a right. It is a favor.
8.What happens if the amendment fails?
The September court ruling stands for now, so most Virginians with felony convictions remain eligible to register. But the lifetime ban stays in Virginia's constitution, the governor's individual restoration power stays in place, jury disqualification stays in place, and the companion legislation never takes effect. Virginia's protection would continue to rest on a federal court's reading of an 1870 statute.
9.How did this get on the ballot, and when would it take effect?
Virginia makes constitutional amendments deliberately hard. A proposed amendment must pass the General Assembly, pass again in a General Assembly elected after an intervening House of Delegates election, and then be approved by the voters.
This amendment passed in 2025 and again in January 2026, when the House approved it 65–33 and the Senate 21–18. If a majority votes yes, it takes effect January 1, 2027, along with the companion legislation implementing it.
Vote yes on Question 3
Early voting is open at the Registrar's office through Saturday, October 31. Election Day is November 3.