Republican Iowa governor vows to restore voting rights to some felons after meeting with Black Lives Matter activists

GOP Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is preparing to sign an executive order restoring voting rights to people who have been convicted with past felonies.

The move comes after Reynolds met with activists in Black Lives Matter’s Des Moines chapter as well as officials with the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union and two state representatives. Iowa is currently the only state in the country that bans all felons from voting unless they individually apply to the governor’s office to have their rights restored.

“We have an important election coming up,” Reynolds said, according to Radio Iowa. “We’re working on the language to see what that looks like, but hopefully it would mirror what we would put in a constitutional amendment so that we could be consistent in what we’re trying to do.”

Reynolds previously pushed the state Legislature to approve an amendment to the state constitution to create the process of automatically restoring voting rights once felons have completed their sentences, but Republicans have rejected the proposal in the past.

The details of the order are still unclear, but the governor will likely redraft the proposed constitutional amendment with limitations sought by GOP lawmakers, such as repayment of all victim restitution before a felon can vote.

“I still am not going to give up on a permanent solution,” Reynolds said. “I just believe that’s the right thing to do, and then it doesn’t matter who’s sitting in the governor’s chair.”

The Des Moines Register reports more than 60,000 Iowans, including 1 in 10 who are black, are barred from voting in the state because of a prior felony conviction.