RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — A Virginia judge sided with Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday in a dispute over a voter restoration database.
Youngkin's administration and the NAACP have been negotiating the release of documents relating to voter rights restoration since May. Despite the state turning over roughly 1,000 pages of documents, the NAACP continued to fight for access to a database storing information from applicants. The administration had agreed to allow the NAACP an in-person inspection of the database, but the parties could not agree to the terms leading to Tuesday's hearing.
With declaratory judgment on the line, the Youngkin administration filed a demurrer, claiming that any governmental record related to the rights restoration process is exempt from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as a working paper because the Virginia Constitution vests the governor with the sole power to restore voting rights. The act exempts working papers and correspondence from the state's executive offices.
Virginia law requires people convicted of felonies to apply directly to the governor to restore voting rights. The applicant's information, including their name, social security number and nature of their offense, is in a database that one adviser to the governor told the court is only accessible to roughly eight people. The administration argued that people applying for voter restoration would want to keep their applications private.
The NAACP argued the state's freedom of information law provides that the respondent must give specific reasons to withhold a document.
"Petitioners seek to shed public light on what they believe is a gross slowdown in the rights restoration process, compared to past gubernatorial administrations of both parties," the organization's memorandum states in opposition to respondents' demurrer. "They are concerned about the potential for racial and political bias in a restoration process with no stated criteria."
Marchant told the packed courtroom that it was clear that the database was a working document of the governor and needed little evidence to prove it.
During the Tuesday hearing, the NAACP sought a declaratory judgment that Youngkin's administration violated the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by withholding nonexempt records, failing to produce partially redacted copies of partially exempt records and giving specific reasons for exempting certain records. The NAACP sought an order directing the administration to produce the nonexempt portions of the database tracking restoration of rights applicants.
The information request submitted in May sought public records detailing how Youngkin restored the voting rights of convicted felons. The number of voters who had their rights restored in 2022 dipped to 4,000, well below the tens of thousands recorded in previous years.
The Office of the Attorney General initially told the NAACP that the records they sought were exempt due to them being working papers of the governor. After negotiations, the administration released roughly 590 pages with gaps in production, including clearly nonexempt records, remaining according to the NAACP.
The NAACP identified five types of nonexempt records the administration failed to release. The records sought include administration transition documents, documents describing the types of categories of information about each applicant requested by the director of clemency, documents related to calendared meetings to discuss various aspects of the restoration of rights process, documents containing relevant information about applicants whose restoration of rights applications were denied and communications with applicants whose applications were denied.
Negotiations stalled, and the administration began not responding to further requests for records. The administration offered a meeting with then-Secretary of the Commonwealth Kay Coles James to discuss the process. The NAACP declined, finding the offered meeting to be an unsatisfactory substitute for producing the nonexempt records.
James sent another letter to the NAACP and the media in July, offering another meeting and defending the administration's actions. The NAACP again asserted that a meeting would not suffice for the requested records.
With a hearing looming, the administration released an additional 91 pages and agreed to permit an in-person inspection of the database tracking restoration of rights applications, subject to limitations to be decided upon by the parties.
On Dec. 6, presumably in anticipation of Tuesday's hearing, the administration produced another 477 pages of communications with rights restoration applicants. Virginia NAACP President Robert Barnette Jr. told reporters after the hearing that despite receiving roughly 1,000 documents, they still found Youngkin's process for determining whose rights are restored unclear.
"There's a shroud of secrecy," Barnette said. "When we are confronted with secrecy, we are concerned that there is something that is hidden that may be inequitable."
Nevertheless, Chief Richmond City Circuit Court Judge William R. Marchant on Tuesday denied the NAACP's request for declaratory judgment.
Former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam restored 69,000 Virginian's voting rights in a day in 2021 when he took executive action to automatically restore the right to vote to all Virginians who are not currently incarcerated.
"Too many of our laws were written during a time of open racism and discrimination, and they still bear the traces of inequity," Northam said in a 2021 press release.
Youngkin terminated the practice, making Virginia the only state in the nation to automatically disenfranchise all people with felony convictions unless they are individually approved. According to the Sentencing Project, one in ten Black Virginians were disenfranchised in 2022. A 2020 statistic from the Sentencing Project indicates that 6% of voting-age Virginians are disenfranchised.
Attorneys representing the state declined to comment.
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