Virginia’s Deliberately Confusing Constitutional Amendments

If the Republican Party’s congressional candidates in Virginia keep even close to the semi-plurality in the lower chamber that they have currently at 5-6 seats it may be driven by the campaigns going around the Commonwealth ginning up interest in defeating the constitutional amendments that are also on the ballot.

These three amendments are very much like the redistricting amendment, bearing little similarity to the way they’re portrayed on the ballot.

It’s one thing to play “fast-and-loose” with details in a mailer promoting something or someone you are campaigning for. It’s an entirely different thing, and one that the left in Virginia has become very good at, to write ballot language that bears little correlation to the actual impact of the amendment.

They obfuscate with rhetoric like, “We only have so much space,” and “We want to make it easy for voters to understand what the vote is about,” as their excuse to write ballot text that bears little, if any, similarity to the actual amendment outside of the fact that it says this is voting for or against the amendment.

Take, for example, the marriage amendment.

Former Virginia Congressman Bob Good has taken up the presidency of the Virginia Conservative Action Fund and has been going around the Commonwealth speaking to groups, telling them that this amendment is not about whether homosexual marriages are going to be permitted as much as it’s about compelling you to comply with someone who wants you to participate in a homosexual marriage ceremony.

Good explains, “These amendments would place people in legal or criminal jeopardy at the discretion and discernment of Jay Jones, the attorney general of Virginia, to decide how to apply these new laws and how to implement these new laws and how to bring consequence to those who are perceived as not sufficiently complying.”

There’s a medical expression called informed consent, and I don’t think Virginia voters are being treated to informed consent when they’re walking into the ballot booth. If you don’t share this with as many people as you know, they might wind up voting in a way contrary to what they actually believe.

So, here is what the Virginia Department of Elections will show you on the ballot, which, by the way, you can begin voting on in 30 days’ time:

“Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to remove the ban on same-sex marriage; affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race; and require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law?”

Here is what the actual constitutional amendment says:

Be it RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the following amendment to the Constitution of Virginia be, and the same hereby is, proposed in conformity with the provisions of Section 1 of Article XII of the Constitution of Virginia, namely:

Section 15-A. Marriage.

(FROM): That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.

(TO): Marriage is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.

This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not,

(FROM): create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intend to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.

(TO): deny the issuance of a marriage license to two adult persons seeking a lawful marriage on the basis of the sex, gender, or race of such persons.

(FROM): Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which are assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.

(TO): This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall recognize any lawful marriage between two adult persons and treat such marriages equally under the law, regardless of the sex, gender, or race of such persons.

The same is true about the restoration of rights for felons.

We lived through the McAuliffe administration opening the jails like it was a celebration of Bastille Day, only to find that a large number of the very people to whom he had automatically granted voting rights were back in jail or on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Advocates for the amendment say the problem is that the governor’s office has not been good at hearing these cases, and I think I know why.

I’m not here to defend Gov. Glenn Youngkin, but as the Left made the case more and more about Republican versus Democrat rather than process versus anarchy, the more it made it impossible for the governor’s administration to grant restoration of rights, lest they be seen as “complicit” with the “defund the police” leftists like Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi and Attorney General Jay Jones.

I see these three constitutional amendments, including the one enshrining abortion into the constitution, as a masterpiece of “all-or-nothing” brinkmanship from the left that’s currently holding a small majority in Virginia.

I know the number of seats may seem large in the House, but each of those seats that adds to the Democrats’ majority was won by 1% to 1.5%, so they could easily be won back.

And with voter turnout teetering at the top end of 40%, you really have to wonder if the people who are holding these offices are at all representative of most Virginians or just the 20.1% that they were able to get out to vote.

That’s why the campaigns of former Congressman Good and former Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears may be just the thing to save the Republicans who are trying to hold onto their congressional seats starting on Sept. 18.

Yes, that’s when early voting starts, in less than 30 days.

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