PADDING THE VOTER ROLLS

In Virginia:

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has granted voting rights to nearly 1,500 felons this year, bumping up the voter rolls ahead of next month's presidential election and putting himself on pace to exceed the record-setting pattern of his predecessor.

During his four years as governor, Mark Warner, a Democrat now running for the U.S. Senate, restored voting rights to 3,414 ex-convicts in Virginia. That exceeded the combined total for all Virginia governors during the previous 20 years, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Mr. Kaine, a Democrat in the third year of his term, had restored voting rights to 2,633 people with felony convictions as of Monday, including 1,445 this year.

"It's not something that was just handed to him," Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said. "He believes in it."...

Stuffing the ballot box - a tradition in the Democratic Party.