Mitch on the Virginia House.

From yesterday’s edition of Del. Mitch Van Yahres’ (D-Charlottesville) weekly constituent newsletter:

This morning I presented HJ565 to the House Privileges and Elections Committee. HJ565 is a resolution that simply encourages the State Board of Elections and local electoral boards to increase their efforts to encourage young people to register and vote. I guess I am naive, because I thought that this was about as uncontroversial a bill as could be. Boy was I wrong! Opponents argued that the General Assembly can’t ask the State Board to encourage young people to vote because next year we’ll want to encourage old people to vote — when will it end??? The kicker was one delegate’s argument that we can’t do this because it’s the parent’s job to encourage political participation not the state’s — I thought this argument only applied to sex education. HJ565 was killed on virtually a party line vote. Ironically, today we unanimously passed HJ669 (introduced by a member of the other party) designating Youth Political Education Day in Virginia. Could someone have been sending me a message?

And:

Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Prince William) introduced a budget amendment to defund any organization that provides abortion or abortion counseling services. This gag order could take away state money from hospitals that provide basic reproductive health services for women. Depending on how abortion counseling is defined, public health clinics could also be affected. If this passes, women’s health can only be harmed. And, I’m sure that I’ve only scratched the surface of possible consequences of this amendment.