McAuliffe Briefed Progressive Organizers on Felon Voting Order, Left Election Officials in Dark

[Geee]

Free Beacon:

Voter registrars across Virginia were caught off guard when Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D.) announced that he was restoring voter rights for 206,000 felons, but progressive activists who had been working to get the would-be-voters registered had known for weeks.

 

Emails obtained through a state Freedom of Information Act request by the Richmond Times-Dispatch strengthen the argument being made by Republicans that the McAuliffe administration was more concerned about the political impact of its order than the logistical nightmare it would create for state agencies.

 

New Virginia Majority, which describes itself as “the catalytic force for the progressive transformation of Virginia,” was told about the order at least three weeks before it was announced on April 22.

 

Tram Nguyen, the group’s executive director, had a meeting with the current secretary of the Commonwealth, Kelly Thomasson, on March 30 and wrote in an email that when she got home from the meeting she was “literally crying.”

 

“Now that I’m home and have let the news sink in, I’m literally sitting here crying,” Nguyen wrote in the email. “What this administration is doing is a game changer in so many ways.”

 

The group was ready to hand out fliers on the day of the announcement and was focused on getting the newly eligible voters on the rolls.

 

“Canvassers from New Virginia Majority were fanning out across Virginia’s urban crescent, paperwork at the ready, hunting for newly eligible voters,” the Washington Post reported in May. “They collected more than 100 applications. In one hour. In the rain.”

 

Nguyen contributed $500 to the Democratic Party of Virginia in January 2014, a week before McAuliffe was sworn in as governor.