Voting is an important right for all of us, but is especially important to people whose decision-making rights are in jeopardy. The disAbility Law Center of Virginia has seen many people lose their right to vote automatically when placed under guardianship. dLCV believes that people who need the assistance of guardians should not automatically lose their right to vote. We have seen some significant progress this year to minimize this automatic denial of voting privileges.
Senator Favola and Delegate Tran introduced proposals providing that finding someone to be in need of a guardianship is not the same thing as finding that they are mentally incompetent for the purpose of voting. HB 1014 (Tran) and SB 34 (Favola) require a court to make a finding of mental incompetence by clear and convincing evidence that the person does not understand the act of voting. SB 34 was approved by the Senate, but was slightly amended in the House, to bring it more into alignment with a future possible constitutional amendment. It was approved by the House and should be approved, in its amended form, by the Senate later this week. HB 1014 was approved by the House, but had the same technical amendments added when it went to the Senate. After approval by the Senate, the House agreed to the changes.
The bills are identical now, and have been through all stages of review. They will now be sent to the Governor for review, probably next week. Last year, these bills were vetoed by Governor Youngkin. We are hopeful of a different result this year.
HJ 2 (Bennett-Parker) and SJ2 (Locke) set up a constitutional referendum to voters in November 2026 to amend the Virginia Constitution to state that the right to vote shall not be abridged by law, except if a person has been found to lack the specific capacity to understand the act of voting. The General Assembly dealt with these resolutions quickly. The House passed HJ2 on January 14, followed by the Senate passing the resolution on January 16. The Senate passed SJ2 on January 15, 2026. The House then approved in on February 2. The measure will be on the ballot this fall.
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