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Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote

Assadique Abdul-Rahman helped Leah Taylor fill out a voter registration form outside Broomfield Methodist Church in Richmond, Va., last month.Credit...Chet Strange for The New York Times

RICHMOND, Va. — On the night Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president, Leah Taylor, a fast-food worker and African-American mother of six, stayed up until 2 a.m. watching the election returns. “I knew that was history, and I wanted to be a part of it,” she said. But she did not vote.

Ms. Taylor, 45, has never voted. In 1991, when she was 20, she was stripped of her voting rights after being convicted of selling crack cocaine and sent to jail for a year. So she was stunned when an organizer from a progressive group, New Virginia Majority, showed up one recent afternoon at the church soup kitchen where she eats lunch and said he could register her.

“Your rights have been restored!” the organizer, Assadique Abdul-Rahman, declared with a theatrical flourish, waving an executive order signed in April by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Ms. Taylor, so moved she nearly cried, promptly signed up.

Thus did Ms. Taylor join a wave of newly eligible voters, all with criminal pasts, signing up in Virginia. But what Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away.

Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s sweeping order, which re-enfranchised 206,000 Virginians who have completed sentences, probation or parole. Last week, the Supreme Court announced a special session to hear arguments in July — in time to rule before the November election.

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A copy of the executive order of Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, which restored voting rights to felons.Credit...Chet Strange for The New York Times

The suit has plunged Virginia and Mr. McAuliffe — a Democrat and close friend of Hillary Clinton’s, the party’s likely presidential nominee — into yet another racially charged voting rights battle. In May, a federal judge upheld a Republican-backed law requiring Virginia voters to provide photo identification, while the Supreme Court let stand a court-imposed redistricting map, drawn to address Democrats’ complaints of racially motivated gerrymandering.

This next fight over restoring voting rights to convicted felons — an issue playing out nationally — could affect the presidential contest and Mrs. Clinton’s fortunes in Virginia, a critical swing state. Ever since Mr. McAuliffe’s order on April 22, progressive groups have been waging a furious registration campaign; as of Friday, state elections officials said, more than 5,800 newly eligible voters had signed up.

“This could get really messy,” said Tram Nguyen, an executive director of New Virginia Majority, a leader in the registration campaign. “What happens if the executive order gets overturned? There’s no precedent; 5,800 people are actively on the registration rolls now. Do we purge them?”

That is precisely what Republicans are asking. In addition to overturning the order, they want the new registrations nullified — a request Ms. Taylor calls “appalling.”

A teenage mother when she went to jail, Ms. Taylor said her time there “gave me clarity.” After her release in 1992, she said, she performed community service, folding clothes in a Salvation Army store, and paid the state $15,000 in fines, with money inherited from her mother. Today, she has part-time jobs at McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and dabbles in advocacy, lobbying lawmakers on behalf of “Fight for $15,” a coalition pushing to raise the minimum wage. She likes both Mrs. Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, and counts herself a Democrat.

“I did my time; I did everything I was supposed to do,” she said. “I paid the courts, I paid the fines and got my life back on track.”

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Karen Fountain, a New Virginia Majority organizer, has signed up so many people that residents have named her “The Voter Lady.”Credit...Chet Strange for The New York Times

In issuing his sweeping order, Mr. McAuliffe made expansive use of his clemency powers to effectively nullify a Civil War-era provision in the State Constitution that barred convicted felons from voting for life — one of the harshest disenfranchisement policies in the nation. In an interview previewing his announcement, Mr. McAuliffe said his legal authority to do so is “ironclad.” But Republicans say the governor lacks blanket authority to restore voting rights and must instead do so on a case-by-case basis — as his predecessors in both parties have done.

“He’s really put a stick in the legislature’s eye,” said Speaker William J. Howell of the Virginia House of Delegates, the lead plaintiff in the Republican suit. He said the suit “has nothing to do with” the registration drive, and rejected Democrats’ accusations that Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote: “The governor has whipped them up.”

Still, race is a powerful subtext; African-Americans make up 19 percent of Virginia’s population, but 45 percent of those covered by the governor’s order. The Sentencing Project, a Washington research organization, says one in five African-Americans in Virginia cannot vote because of felony convictions.

“When you look at the fact that of the individuals who are most impacted by this, 45 percent of them are African-American, what conclusion can we draw?” asked State Senator Mamie Locke, chairwoman of the Virginia Black Legislative Caucus, which held “Voices for The Vote” rallies on Saturday in three Virginia cities.

Organizers of the registration drive say they would like to sign up 25,000 new voters in time to cast ballots on Election Day.

“That could make a difference,” said Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst in Virginia, noting that some state races in Virginia had been decided by relatively slim margins, of 5,000 or 6,000 votes.

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Assadique Abdul-Rahman congratulated Leonard Neville after he filled out his voter registration form.Credit...Chet Strange for The New York Times

Here in Richmond, the capital, the registration campaign is most intense in some of the poorest corners of the city, in places like Gilpin Court, a public housing development in Jackson Ward, a historically African-American neighborhood. Karen Fountain, another New Virginia Majority organizer, has signed up so many people that residents have named her “The Voter Lady.”

Ms. Fountain estimated that roughly three-quarters of those she encounters in Gilpin Court have lost their right to vote. On a sweltering Friday afternoon, she walked the neighborhood’s streets, asking people if they had heard what “Governor Terry,” as she calls Mr. McAuliffe, had done. Many had not; some remain ineligible.

“I can’t; I just got home,” one tattooed young man replied, when Ms. Fountain asked if he wanted to register. “Are you on probation?” she asked. He nodded his head yes. “Supervised?” she asked. He nodded again. “O.K.,” Ms. Fountain said, “when you get off, you can register.”

For Mr. Abdul-Rahman, a cheery 53-year-old with a corny expression — “Cool bananas!” — for things that please him, the work is deeply personal. He spent 17 years in prison, for armed robbery and breaking and entering. In prison, he read history books and taught himself about politics. When he heard about the governor’s order, he signed up to vote, and began registering others.

Then New Virginia Majority hired him; the day he met Ms. Taylor was his first day of work. Standing outside the church, on a thin grassy patch under a shady crepe myrtle tree, he registered 11 new voters during the lunch hour — some homeless, some struggling with addiction to drugs. None seemed happier than Ms. Taylor.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, giving Mr. Abdul-Rahman a hug after signing her papers. “This is such a beautiful day.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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