"this plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years."

The Suffrage of I. Lewis Libby Posted July 5, 2007 12:07 PM (EST)
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Libby makes his home in the tony Washington D.C. suburb of McLean. And in the commonwealth of Virginia, those convicted of felonies are automatically barred from voting for life. You may be asking yourself what interest a state would have in keeping criminals who have completed their sentence from casting a ballot. Wonder no more in the case of Virginia -- when the state Constitutional Convention met in 1902 to pass a ban on felon enfranchisement, a delegate spoke approvingly of the new law, saying "this plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years." Scooter finds himself caught up in a plan that was never meant to involve him.

In post-Reconstruction era, many other U.S. states constructed similar bans. But only Virginia and neighboring Kentucky have made it to 2007 with a total ban on ex-felon suffrage. (Scooter well may be wishing now that he had chosen a place in Chevy Chase instead.)