The Suffrage of I. Lewis Libby

"Scooter has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and sacrificed much in the service to this country." So said George Bush, and he has hardly been alone in praising the service Scooter Libby rendered in his long career in government. But there's one simple act of service that Libby will render no more. He'll never again cast a vote in a local, state, or federal election.

Libby makes his home in the tony Washington D.C. suburb of McLean. And in the commonwealth of Virginia, those convicted of felonies are automatically barred from voting for life. You may be asking yourself what interest a state would have in keeping criminals who have completed their sentence from casting a ballot. Wonder no more in the case of Virginia -- when the state Constitutional Convention met in 1902 to pass a ban on felon enfranchisement, a delegate spoke approvingly of the new law, saying "this plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years." Scooter finds himself caught up in a plan that was never meant to involve him.

In post-Reconstruction era, many other U.S. states constructed similar bans. But only Virginia and neighboring Kentucky have made it to 2007 with a total ban on ex-felon suffrage. (Scooter well may be wishing now that he had chosen a place in Chevy Chase instead.)

Now, in truth, there are two likely scenarios in which Libby gets his voting card back. The first, of course, is that Bush grants him a full pardon, annulling his conviction altogether and making Libby no longer a felon in the eyes of the law.

The second is that Libby can petition the Governor of Virginia to restore his voting rights. (Most Virginia felons have to wait out a three year period before petitioning for restoration, but of course here Scooter has a leg up, since Bush erased that sentence altogether.) Not long ago, restoration was a daunting process. Only a handful of felons were able to navigate the convoluted system and get their rights restored. But the last Governor of Virginia, Mark Warner, was much heralded for streamlining the process and returning voting cards to a record number of citizens. That record setting number of restorations? About 2% of Virginia's total ex-felon population.

Of course, while most ex-convicts have to survive the petitioning process solo, here's betting that Libby will be guided by the best counsel that money can buy. His odds of joining the lucky 2% are good ones.

I suppose, though, that there might be a third, longer-term route to voting rights restoration for Libby. We've seen the law-and-order, tough-on-crime Bush Administration have a sudden change of heart on the justness of federal sentencing when one of its own is the recipient of an "excessive" punishment. Libby and his friends in government -- many of whom live in Virginia, too -- might well also be giving a second look to the wisdom of lifetime felon disenfranchisement.