Sam Harris walked into Elephant's Fork Elementary School in Suffolk this fall and cast a ballot for the first time in his life. He is an Army veteran who spent 24 years in prison after a 1999 crime spree and car chase that ended in Norfolk, and he had his voting rights restored by Gov. Abigail Spanberger before he could finally mark a ballot of his own.
The moment capped a years-long journey that began with a conditional pardon from former Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2024, according to The Virginian-Pilot. Youngkin pardoned Harris but did not approve his separate application to restore his voting rights, the paper reported. It was Spanberger who later restored Harris's voting rights, a shift that finally allowed him to register and vote.
Harris was 30 years old when he went to prison, and by his own account the years that followed reshaped nearly everything about his life. He joined the Army at age 17 and was stationed in Alaska, where he nearly drowned in a 1988 training accident — an episode that, decades later, led to a diagnosis of service-connected PTSD. Before that diagnosis, he struggled with addiction, a thread that ran through much of what came after.
A Pardon That Didn't Erase Every Obstacle
Harris has said that a pardon did not remove all the barriers he faced after his release, pointing specifically to difficulty finding employment because of his convictions for robbery and abduction. He is also engaged in an ongoing fight with the VA over benefits, even as he has built a new role for himself helping others navigate similar struggles. He now works as a peer recovery specialist, visiting prisons and working with returning citizens, and he started programs for incarcerated veterans while he was still behind bars.
Harris described receiving his voting-rights paperwork in the mail, a few weeks after being told he was eligible, as something that felt healing. He said he had never voted before his 2026 ballot, and he called the experience a surreal moment. He also said he intends to use his restored vote and to tell other people how to use theirs.
Spanberger mentioned Harris by name in her keynote address at the 2026 Defend the Vote March on Washington, citing him as an example of her broader push on rights restoration. She has said she restored voting rights for more than 100,000 Virginians since taking office in January 2026, a tally that The Virginian-Pilot reported includes Harris. By contrast, the paper reported that Youngkin restored the rights of about 10,000 people during his entire term.
A Statewide Debate Over Automatic Restoration
Harris's case lands amid a larger fight over how Virginia handles voting rights for people with felony convictions. This November, according to the same Virginian-Pilot report, Harris plans to vote in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that would change the state's restoration process going forward. Under that proposal, the Virginia Department of Elections says a person convicted of a felony would lose the right to vote only during incarceration and would regain it automatically upon release, without needing to apply for restoration — a notable departure from the system Harris had to navigate himself.
The scale of that system has drawn separate scrutiny. Virginia's Department of Elections said it sent mailers to 234,852 people notifying them they were eligible to register to vote, according to VPM. That outlet also reported that a federal judge ruled only the original 11 common-law felonies could be used to disenfranchise someone under his order, and that the state formally reduced the number of felony convictions that would lead to a loss of voting rights to three. VPM further noted that roughly 260,000 people in Virginia were barred from voting because of felony convictions in 2024, citing figures from The Sentencing Project.
Virginia's current rules, separate from the proposed amendment, already restore the right to register automatically upon release for most people — but those convicted of specific disqualifying offenses remain eligible only if the governor personally restores their rights, according to the Department of Elections. That distinction is central to why Harris's path required a governor's action rather than an automatic reinstatement.
An earlier report from WAVY similarly described Harris preparing to vote for the first time after his civil rights were restored, underscoring how long the process had been in motion before he reached the ballot box this fall.
