Friday, November 22, 2024

The Election is over. What's Next?

If you’ve made it this far, you are still reading some news. And I’m glad my Richmond Report column has made the cut for you!  

In my family, it remains difficult to consume news from mass media sources as we are bombarded with breaking news alerts that would be shockingly atrocious if we hadn’t been told exactly what to expect.  

The silver lining, and I’ll concede it is the thinnest of thin silver linings, is that the party that wins the White House tends to suffer from a backlash in Virginia’s odd year elections the following cycle. 

So, the good news is we don’t have to wait two or four years to register our feelings about the incoming Administration and the policies they are likely to implement. We have an election in 2025 that will allow us to elect leaders that want Virginia to remain a safe haven for abortion rights in the south, a leader on voting rights, and a place that protects workers and their paychecks while maintaining an excellent business environment 

Although the national results weren’t what most of us voted for, the state and local level results begin to tell us the story of what matters to Virginians. 

Election Statistics 

Perhaps because Virginia is considered safely blue, neither campaign devoted massive resources here. The result was that overall turnout fell off a bit from prior presidential years. Virginia had 69.8% voter turnout in 2024, below the 75% we saw in 2020 and 72% in 2016. 

The City of Falls Church saw a 76% voter turnout rate, with just under 80% of those votes case going to the Harris-Walz ticket. Not quite as high as 2020 or 2016, which indicates to me that many folks willing to vote for the GOP nominee in 2016 and 2020 couldn’t bring themselves to cast a vote after what they witnessed on January 6, 2021. 

What’s Next? 

As desperate as things may seem at the national level, we have an opportunity in 2025 to send a message that our values in Virginia haven’t changed. All three statewide offices – Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General – are up for election as well as all 100 members of the House of Delegates.  

We currently have the slimmest possible majority in the House and Senate, but Tim Kaine won 59 of Virginia’s 100 House of Delegates districts, and Harris-Walz won 58. That means we have a real opportunity to expand our House majority. 

Proposed Constitutional Amendments  

Starting in January, one of the very first things the 2025 General Assembly will take up will be three major constitutional amendmentscodifying a right to an abortion (HJ 1), voting rights restoration (HJ 2), and repealing the same-sex marriage ban that is still on the books in Virginia (HJ 9). 

Last week, the House Privileges and Elections Committee voted to advance these amendments, first introduced during the 2024 Session and carried over, to the House Floor for 2025. 

HJ 1 enshrines the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, prohibiting the Commonwealth from penalizing or prosecuting an individual for exercising this right. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, we’ve seen how conservative states have severely reduced or eliminated abortion access.  

HJ 2 restores voting rights for those who have been released from incarceration after a felony conviction. This amendment restores their rights automatically upon their release. Currently, only the Governor has the power to restore voting rights once an individual has applied for restoration. As a result, the process is very opaque and applied sporadically without providing details for a denial.  

HJ 9 repeals the current constitutional amendment that prohibits same-sex marriage and affirms the right to marry. The only reason that same-sex couples can get married in Virginia right now is because of the 2015 US Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which made this legal across the country. If that is ever overturned, then we will revert to the marriage prohibition that still exists. 

For these three constitutional amendments to appear on the ballot, we must pass the amendments during the 2025 Session, have the intervening 2025 November election, and then pass them again in the exact same format in 2026. Then, the amendments go to the voters in November 2026. This means Democrats must maintain control of the House in the 2025 election. If the Virginia GOP takes over again, none of these amendments will survive.  

You can view the full text of these proposed constitutional amendments by visiting lis.virginia.gov.