Ask Candidates for Governor -- Do you support the right to vote for all?

When challenged in 2016 by people asserting that his voter restoration initiative was a plan to qualify Black people to vote for Hilary, then Governor Terry McAuliffe chose to respond by publishing this data that showed that a majority (52%) of the 170,000+ people whose rights he restored were white (even though a majority of those disenfranchised were and are people of color).  

This disproportion reflected the reality of longer sentences post enactment of Virginia's "no parole" law in 1995 and the continued and increased racialization of the criminal legal system. This reality and the fact that about 12,000 more people (majority Black) are felonized each year demonstrate unequivocally that the only way to bring racial justice to the ballot box is by constitutionalizing universal suffrage -- guaranteeing the right to vote to every Virginian 18 and over -- a right that can't ever be taken away by the government from any person for any reason. 

We need to demand that every candidate for governor commit to champion the right to vote for all (no exceptions, no requirements other than age of majority).  

As Martin Luther King said, "give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal [or state] government about our basic rights." 

The vote is the foundation of our democracy, and it belongs to the people.  We should not allow government to take it away nor allow government to decide whether and when a person can get it back.