dictate their own voting requirements, you end up with a patchwork quilt of some states with very restrictive felony disenfranchisement laws and others like vermont and maine that allow prisoners to vote. i m surprised that there hasn t been maybe there has been a felon who s gotten a lawyer, taken it to the supreme court and saying we still have our rights. why aren t we allowed to vote? because they would lose. the felon disenfranchisement does not by itself violate the equal protection clause of the constitution. it is constitutionally permitted. it has been challenged. but so far we have many states that have some form of felony disenfranchisement. it is constitutionally permissib permissible. what makes the florida issue complicated is this question. this is what it boils down to. if florida has the right to ban a felon from voting for the rest
why did the governor do this now? so the governor is he is issuing this executive order today, and this is part of a wider trend in the nation right now. towards more progressive, more humane, more progressive criminal justice policies. we recently saw a bill on capitol hill, first step act, that was bipartisan criminal justice reform. the president of the united states signed that bill it was a real stand out because there was nothing bipartisan getting done. exactly. this is criminal justice reform. the last election of last november illustrates nothing other than criminal justice reform is certainly a big important area right now. what we saw in florida, with voters passing a ballot initiative to let yeah. felon disenfranchisement in florida is, you know, transformational change in this
commonwealth of virginia. once that picture with the blackface and klansman came out there is no way you can continue to be the governor of the commonwealth of virginia. we ve had a horrible and sordid past as it relates to race relations. we ve worked to move the state forward. if you remember 1902, a state senator said that i m putting a felon disenfranchisement in our constitution to eliminate the darky from being a political factor in virginia. i was proud to 114 years later give those felons their rights back. but we ve worked hard in virginia. so this is, i ve got to tell you, it s heartbreaking. one of the worst 48 hours. but vrirginia needs to come out of this stronger. i can t sit here and pretend and be in the steps of those individuals who have been offended by those photos. let me ask you, if it s not him in the photo, which is what he s saying, why do you still think he should resign? well, first he said it was
this picture. and then friday evening, it came out that ralph indeed was, he said, he was in the picture. at that point for me, morally, the only right thing to do, and it was hard. i called ralph on friday night. it was one of the hardest things i had to do. was my lieutenant governor. we worked closely together. we did so many great things working together for the commonwealth of virginia. once that picture with the blackface and klansman came out there is no way you can continue to be the governor of the commonwealth of virginia. we ve had a horrible and sordid past as it relates to race relations. we ve worked to move the state forward. if you remember 1902, a state senator said that i m putting a felon disenfranchisement in our constitution to eliminate the darky from being a political factor in virginia. i was proud to 114 years later give those felons their rights back. but we ve worked hard in virginia. so this is, i ve got to tell
as we work out ways for these young people to return home, some of them will not be so young when they get out, but as we work out ways for them to return home, we have to also work out ways for them to rebuild a home. we have to work out ways for them to return to not just their families and their communities, but to society. the ultimate participation in the american experiment called democracy is of course the right to vote. and that is why the department of justice [ applause ] continues to call for all states to revisit the issue of felon disenfranchisement. let them vote. let them vote. we are talking about our country s most sacred right. so even as the atlantic s ta-nehisi coates mapped the decades of incarceration