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To the editor:
Contrary to what most voters believe, there IS a statewide election in Virginia this year - not for candidates but for important constitutional amendments.
Two of these amendments concern the fundamental right to vote. The first would permit any registered voter who has not voted in four years to continue to be registered if the individual so requests in writing (and still lives at the same address). Currently, any voter who has not voted in four consecutive
years - even for illness or other compelling reasons - is automatically purged from the voting rolls and cannot vote again until he or she makes another trip to the local registrar to re-register at least a month prior to any regular election.
Make no mistake: voters should cast a ballot in every election, but the fact is that relatively few do so.
In the 1985 governor’s contest, for instance, less than a third (32.2 percent) of Virginia’s eligible population (age 18 and over) went to the polls. We have trouble enough getting decent turnouts without automatically purging people from the voting lists,
97.4%