Certificate Restoring Voting Rights to Deceased Virginia Dog Prompts Lawmaker's Call for Audit

A Virginia man opened an official letter this fall and found a certificate restoring the civil rights of his dog. The dog, Biscuit, was a beagle-hound mix from Goochland County who died about five years ago. The document, bearing Gov. Abigail Spanberger's signature, says the executive reviewed the particulars of a criminal case and decided Biscuit's voting and jury-service rights should be restored.

The owner passed the letter to Del. Tom Garrett, a Republican from Buckingham, who is now demanding an investigation. The owner asked not to be named, citing a wish to avoid political backlash, but confirmed to Fox News Digital that the letter is authentic. In a statement to Garrett, the owner called Biscuit a good dog who is greatly missed, and said that, to their knowledge, she was never convicted of a felony and never showed any interest in voting.

The owner also said Biscuit was never sent to the pound or had any other contact with Richmond that might have put her on the voting rolls. A sibling is currently incarcerated, the owner said, but that connection is moot, because the governor's stated effort covers only former convicts who have been released.

The episode follows another controversy, in Chesapeake, over a certificate issued to "Betty No Last Name," a purported convict with no surname whose rights were restored. It also lands days before Virginians vote on an Election Day ballot measure, backed by Richmond Democrats, that would make voting-rights restoration automatic for felons.

Garrett, who practices law in Fluvanna County when he is not legislating, framed the matter as one of process rather than principle. "This is not a question of whether people who have served their sentences deserve a second chance," he said. He described it as a question of whether the Commonwealth is using a constitutional power of the governor with even basic review. He pointed to the administration's own words: in July, he said, it announced that Secretary of the Commonwealth Candi Mundon-King would proactively identify Virginians who had lost their rights, confirm they were eligible, and restore them. In August, Spanberger announced that the number of people whose rights had been restored since she took office in January had grown from an initial 66,000 to 100,000.

Garrett wants an immediate independent audit of the restoration actions. He also wants the state to disclose the record that led to "Biscuit Rigsby" being identified as a convicted felon, and to explain what the governor's office means by its "review of the particulars." He says any inquiry should count how many certificates and citations went to deceased, nonexistent or duplicate people, and should require immediate preservation of relevant data. He also wants to know what databases were used and what safeguards existed. He said his questions are not partisan and that supporters of restoration should be outraged too. In a video posted to social media, he asked, "At what point does rank incompetence and malfeasance become criminal conduct?"

Spanberger's office disputes the premise. A spokesperson told Fox News Digital: "Of course we did not restore the rights of a dog." The office said it could not disclose the individual's information, but that the record is associated with a person with a date of birth and Social Security number. It did not say how that person's record came to carry the dog's name on the certificate.

That unanswered question is what to watch. Virginians vote Tuesday on automatic restoration, and the debate over how the current review works, and whether a name error or a deeper flaw produced Biscuit's certificate, is likely to follow the ballot measure either way.