VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS have labored in recent years, by an array of legislative and judicial means, to suppress the vote — specifically, the African American vote — in an effort to nudge a presidential swing state into the GOP column. Alas for them, the crusade was unavailing; in November, the Old Dominion was one of a handful of states that Hillary Clinton won by a larger margin than the one enjoyed by Barack Obama in 2012.

Undaunted, and still determined to diminish the electoral clout of black voters, Richmond Republicans are back at it. This time they are targeting a class of felons, disproportionately African American, the restoration of whose voting rights the GOP would like to make as difficult and protracted as possible.

A proposed constitutional amendment, passed by a 21-to-19 party-line vote in the state Senate, is of a piece with Republican legislation in recent years to tighten voter-ID laws, whose intent and effect are to erode the electoral power of minorities, who tend to vote for Democrats. The amendment would restrict Virginia governors, now granted broad authority to restore felons’ voting rights following completion of their sentences, by limiting them to automatically re-enfranchising only nonviolent felons, and only under unspecified conditions set by the legislature.

As for those convicted of violent felonies — a class that the legislature could define to include people found guilty of assault or drug crimes that might carry a few years in prison — the amendment would bar the governor from restoring their voting rights for five years. That’s five years following not only the completion of prison terms, probation and parole but also full payment of any costs, fines, fees or restitution ordered by a court. It means the poorest ex-convicts, who are also disproportionately African American, would have the hardest time regaining their voting rights.

The measure’s sponsor, Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), pretends that no bigotry informs the amendment, just as previous generations of Virginia officials touted the poll tax and literacy tests as racially neutral. The court system, he huffs, “does not impose that sentence [depending on] whether you are black, white, red, purple or green.” In fact, of 206,000 felons whose rights Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) tried to restore en masse last year, nearly half were black, as compared with a fifth of the state’s overall population.

The state Supreme Court disallowed the governor’s mass voting rights restoration, but it also rejected Republican attempts to block him from using an expedited and all-but-automatic system, which has been in place since last summer. Mr. McAuliffe, who took office in 2014, has now restored the vote to more than 130,000 Virginians, including many disenfranchised for decades, far more than all his predecessors combined.

That has alarmed GOP dignitaries, worried as black voting clout gradually increases. It also brings Virginia into line with the vast majority of states, where the restoration of voting rights is automatic after discharge from prison or completion of parole. What a shame Republicans have entrenched themselves as the Grand Old Party of disenfranchisement.