What Virginia Taught Me About Who Holds Power

Before America had a Constitution, Virginia was already asking where government gets its authority, how far that authority should reach, and what happens when power needs to be reformed. Those questions stopped being historical for me when government power reached my own life.

On June 12, 1776, Virginia adopted a document that would help shape the country that did not yet officially exist. George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights said that power comes from the people, that government exists for their common benefit, and that those entrusted with authority remain accountable to them. Thomas Jefferson drew from that declaration while writing the Declaration of Independence, and Mason’s work later became an important foundation for the federal Bill of Rights. That is more than a piece of Virginia trivia. It tells us something about the political inheritance of this Commonwealth. Virginia was wrestling with the limits of government before the United States Constitution was written.

Eleven years later, Virginians were again at the center of the argument. James Madison drafted what became known as the Virginia Plan, and Gov. Edmund Randolph presented it at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. It proposed a national government divided among legislative, executive, and judicial branches. George Washington presided over the convention. George Mason participated extensively but refused to sign the finished Constitution, with the absence of a declaration of rights among his principal objections. Madison, who initially questioned whether a federal bill of rights was necessary, later introduced amendments in Congress that became the Bill of Rights. I love that part of the story because it is not neat. These men disagreed. They changed positions. They worried about government being too weak and about government becoming too powerful. Mason could help shape a constitutional system and still refuse to put his name on the final document. Madison could help design a stronger national government and later help place additional restraints upon it.

For years, I understood those facts primarily as history. Then government power reached my own life. I have felony convictions. I completed my court-ordered obligations and supervision, paid what I owed, rebuilt my life, started a business, became involved in my community, and eventually applied to have my voting rights restored. My application was denied. That sentence is short because there is no reason to dress it up.

Virginia’s Constitution currently says that a person convicted of a felony is not qualified to vote unless his or her civil rights have been restored by the governor or another appropriate authority. A separate provision gives the governor the power to remove political disabilities resulting from a conviction. Once you have personally gone through that process, questions about government stop floating around at the level of political theory. Who should hold this power? What standard should govern its use? How much should depend on the judgment of one officeholder? Would I still be comfortable giving that same authority to a governor whose politics were completely different from mine?

That last question has become one of the most useful tests I apply to government. It is easy to favor executive power when the executive agrees with us. It is easy to defend discretion when we expect that discretion to produce the outcome we want. The harder test is whether we would design the same system without knowing who would occupy the office next. That is where my understanding of limited government has changed.

I do not believe limited government means powerless government. George Mason did not write that government should disappear. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights says government exists for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people. It also says power originates with the people and that public officials are their trustees and servants. Those ideas sit beside each other for a reason. Government has responsibilities. It must enforce laws. It must maintain order. It has a duty to protect people from violence and fraud. I believe strongly in accountability for wrongdoing. But accountability does not end the conversation about power.

My work in criminal justice reform has taught me to ask whether a restriction still serves the public purpose that justified it. Time matters. Conduct matters. Rehabilitation matters. Risk matters. Individual circumstances matter. A government capable of protecting the public should also be capable of distinguishing one situation from another.

That same instinct follows me elsewhere. I am a small-business owner, so I pay attention when broad government policies create costs for people far removed from the problem policymakers were trying to solve. I care about immigration law being enforceable, but I also care whether the law provides clear and workable processes. I advocate for mental health because sometimes government has a legitimate role in helping build systems that individuals and families cannot create alone. Those issues do not require identical policy answers. They should not. What I want to keep consistent is the question I bring to them: What is government trying to accomplish, what authority is it using, and where are the limits?

Virginia gave us language for that long before I was alive. Our Declaration of Rights calls for a “frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” That phrase has stayed with me. It does not tell us that every policy choice made in the eighteenth century must remain frozen forever. Virginia’s own Constitution provides a detailed process for amendment. Proposed changes must pass the General Assembly, survive an intervening House election and another legislative vote, and then go before the voters. Reform is built into the constitutional structure itself.

Virginia voters in 2026 are confronting that process directly. One proposed amendment asks whether the state constitution should establish a fundamental right to vote and provide that a person convicted of a felony loses that right during incarceration but regains it upon release. People can disagree about that proposal. They can argue about punishment, rehabilitation, executive authority and where the line should be drawn. But the argument itself is profoundly Virginian.

More than 250 years ago, Virginians were already debating what government owes the people and what the people are entitled to demand from government. Mason questioned a Constitution because he believed liberty needed stronger protection. Madison helped construct national power and then helped write limitations on it. Washington presided while competing visions were argued in the same room. Their legacy is not that we must agree. Their legacy is that power should always be examined.

That is the tradition I want my own work to reflect. Conserve what is good. Reform what is broken. Be willing to hold people accountable, but be equally willing to ask whether government itself is being held accountable. And never become so comfortable with power that we forget what Virginia declared before the United States had a Constitution of its own: power begins with the people.