Voter Registration
Amends
Article II. Franchise and Officers
Section 2. Registration of voters
Summary
This measure updates voter registration requirements to remove the need to provide occupation or marital status, and to clarify the need to provide any prior legal name (besides just a maiden name).
Shall the Constitution of Virginia be amended to change the information required to register to vote by deleting marital status and occupation and by including any prior legal name?
- First resolution – HJR286 – 1981
- Second resolution – HJR58 – 1982
- Referendum legislation – H504 – 1982
Article II. Franchise and Officers
Section 2. Registration of voters
The General Assembly shall provide by law for the registration of all persons otherwise qualified to vote who have met the residence requirements contained in this article, and shall ensure that the opportunity to register is made available. Registrations accomplished prior to the effective date of this section shall be effective hereunder. The registration records shall not be closed to new or transferred registrations more than thirty days before the election in which they are to be used.
Applications to register shall require the applicant to provide under oath the following information on a standard form: full name, including the maiden and any other prior legal name name of a woman, if married; age; date and place of birth; marital status; occupation; social security number, if any; whether the applicant is presently a United States citizen; address and place of abode and date of residence in the precinct; place of any previous registrations to vote; and whether the applicant has ever been adjudicated to be mentally incompetent or convicted of a felony, and if so, under what circumstances the applicant’s right to vote has been restored. Except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, all applications to register shall be completed in person before the registrar and by or at the direction of the applicant and signed by the applicant, unless physically disabled. No fee shall be charged to the applicant incident to an application to register.
Nothing in this article shall preclude the General Assembly from requiring as a prerequisite to registration to vote the ability of the applicant to read and complete in his own handwriting the application to register.
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article2/section2/
