Virginia - On Friday, Virginia's state supreme court blocked governor Terry McAuliffe’s move to restore voting rights to felons that have completed their sentence in a scathing 4-3 opinion that chided the state's top executive for the “unprecedented scope, magnitude, and categorical nature” of the executive order. Read more in the Wall Street Journal. The court emphasized that the governor's clemency powers were meant to be affected on a case-by-case basis.       11,600 former felons are already registered to vote under the now defunct order. Those registrations will now be cancelled per the court's order. Dissenting judges contended that the…

Virginia - The Virginia Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe’s April order restoring voting rights to over 200,000 of the state's felons in a special session scheduled for Tuesday, July 19. The Virginia Attorney General plans a four-point defense of the governor's authority under the State constitution to restore felon voting rights. Read more in the Richmond Free Press. The change is sweeping: Nearly half of African-Americans in Virginia, which makeup 20% of the population - are affected by the civil war era law. Read more in the New York Times. Watch a local television…