Voting Rights Subcommittee

Friday, February 6, 2026·1h 11m·▶ Watch / Listen

The Virginia Voting Rights Subcommittee advanced three bills — automatic voting rights restoration enabling legislation, updates to the Virginia Voting Rights Act, and the National Popular Vote Compact — while a strict photo ID bill's outcome remained unclear after a motion to table it was introduced and the transcript recorded the bill as failing six to two.

Key Actions

·HB 964 – Voting Rights Restoration Enabling Legislation for HJ2No Vote

+ 2 more actions

Controversies

Reliability of the National Popular Vote Compact — West Virginia certification and excluded votes

Sean Parnell of Save Our States Action argued the compact 'cannot deliver on its promises,' citing that West Virginia's 2024 vote count was not certified by the day the compact would have required it, and that lobbyists for the compact have suggested either estimating vote totals or excluding West Virginia entirely. Chair Price responded by stating that many of Parnell's talking points are supported by the Heritage Foundation, but did not directly rebut the specific certification scenarios he raised.

+ 4 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“You know that if you show up to the polls and you say, hey, I'm Tim Griffin and I have no photo id, then you can sign a statement saying, I promise that I'm Tim Griffin, even though I have no evidence of it. And they say, are you sure? And you say, yes, I promise. And I'm gonna sign a document that says that I am. That is something that's going to be abused. I'm sure it is abused.”
Delegate Griffin — Delegate Griffin, sponsor of HB 1131, was explaining why he believes Virginia's current option to sign a sworn statement in lieu of photo ID should be eliminated.

+ 3 more quotes

Votes

Motion to lay HB 1131 on the tableFailed

Motion to adopt technical amendment to HB 965No Vote

Motion to report HB 964 with amendmentNo Vote

Motion to report HB 967No Vote

Motion to report HB 965 with amendmentsNo Vote

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TranscriptPreview

Good morning. The House Privileges Election Subcommittee on Voting Rights will come to order. The committee will be at ease. We will come back to order. Good morning. This is the final meeting of our voting rights subcommittee until after crossover. We are going to get started this morning and the clerk may open the rolls. There we go. And the clerk shall. Shall. Close the rolls. A quorum is present. We have roughly four bills before us this morning and the first one I see is delegate Griffin. So HB 1131. Good morning and thank you. Mr. Chair. I am here to and committee. I'm here to present House Bill 13 1131, which I'm especially proud of this. This is a photo ID bill for elections. This is probably with all the disagreements that Republicans and Democrats have, this is one of the one things that voters agree on overwhelmingly by about 80% that we should have photo ID. As you know. Well, the statute that we're dealing with here, 24.2404 is about 50 pages long. So there's a number of amendments that it adds some language, it takes some things out. If I was to try to boil…

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