Biscuit Rigsby got official mail from the Governor’s office. It said her right to vote had been restored.

Biscuit is a beagle-hound mix from Goochland County. She died about five years ago.

Her owner put it best: “Biscuit was a good dog and is greatly missed. To my knowledge, she was never convicted of a felony, nor did she ever show any interest in voting.”

The state disagreed. The certificate, dated Sept. 4, 2026, says Biscuit Rigsby had been “convicted and sentenced for crime(s)” and that the Executive had “completed review of the particulars of the individual’s case.”

Translation: somebody in Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D) administration looked over Biscuit’s file, found a conviction, and signed off.

“Of course we did not restore the rights of a dog”

That is the Governor’s spokesperson, word for word. The record, the office said, “is associated with a person with a date of birth and Social Security number.” They would not say who.

So, the office says, the record belongs to a real person, and that person’s record is tied to a certificate for a dead beagle. The owner says Biscuit was never sent to a pound and never had any contact with the state that could have put her on a list.

The Governor stood by the process. “Every person whose votes we have restored have been linked to a person with a proper name, a Social Security number, and a date of birth,” she told CBS 6.

A proper name. Like Biscuit Rigsby.

On the string of errors, she blamed the tools: “We are working with clunky subpar databases, frankly.”

Biscuit was not the first strange letter in the mail

Biscuit did not come out of nowhere. In July, the Governor’s office announced it had restored the voting rights of 66,085 Virginians in about six months.

Her Secretary of the Commonwealth, Candi Mundon King, vouched for the work: “our team reviews every individual who has their voting rights restored, working with our law enforcement partners to make sure we get it right.”

By late August, Spanberger said, the number was 100,000. She announced it from the Lincoln Memorial: “As of 2pm yesterday, my Administration had restored the rights of 100,000 eligible Virginians.”

Then the mail started landing in the wrong places. In October, families reported restoration letters addressed to dead relatives. Spanberger said her office was “looking into that possibility.” We wrote about those letters on Oct. 14.

Asked how many letters went to the dead, she did not give a number. She said fixing the records depends partly on how fast families report a death.

There was also a certificate issued to “Betty No Last Name.” Spanberger said a September spreadsheet put the last name in the middle-name field, and the mail merge sent it out that way.

Then Biscuit.

The certificate says her case was reviewed. A delegate wants proof.

A Virginia governor cannot restore rights in bulk. The Supreme Court of Virginia said so in 2016, when it threw out Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s blanket order covering “approximately 206,000 convicted felons.”

The court said every governor before him had acted “on an individualized case-by-case basis taking into account the specific circumstances of each.” The constitution requires the Governor to report the “particulars of every case” to the General Assembly.

The constitution makes the Governor answer to the General Assembly for the “particulars of every case.” Biscuit’s certificate says that review happened. The question is whether anybody did it.

Del. Tom Garrett (R-HD-56), whose constituent got the letter, is asking for an investigation. “Whatever your position on restoration of rights, Virginians should be able to expect that the Governor knows whether the individual whose rights she is restoring is, at a minimum, number one, alive, and number two, actually a person,” he said.

He wants an independent audit and the record behind the certificate. His sharpest line: “At what point does rank incompetence and malfeasance become criminal conduct?”

The last look at the Governor’s review before voters end it

Here is the part that matters for Fairfax. The Times-Dispatch’s Biscuit story ran Tuesday, Nov. 3, the same day Virginia voted on Question 3. That night the Associated Press called it: the amendment passed. Results are unofficial until the state certifies them.

Question 3 makes restoration automatic once a felon is out of prison. It takes the Governor’s review out of the picture. We urged a No vote, and we lost that one.

So Biscuit’s certificate is a look at how that review worked right up until voters took it away. One hundred thousand restorations in about seven months. Letters to the dead. A spreadsheet that ate a last name. A beagle-hound mix with no felony her owner ever heard of, and a certificate Del. Garrett says carries the Governor’s signature.

Spanberger’s answer is that restoring rights is not the same as registering to vote. “It is a thorough process,” she said. Nobody is claiming Biscuit voted. She has been gone about five years, and she was a good dog.

But the office that told Biscuit her particulars were reviewed says it reviews every one of the 100,000 cases it announced. How many looked like hers? The Governor’s office has not said whose record this was, how it happened, or how many letters went to the dead.

The next time Virginia Democrats tell you the system is thorough, remember Biscuit. She never showed any interest in voting. The state mailed her the certificate anyway.