Growing Momentum for Change; States Reform Felony Voter Laws
Feature Story by Andrew Post - December 5, 2006
More than 5.3 million Americans have relinquished their right to vote, not by choice, but because the law bans them from going to the polls. Over the last decade however, many states have struck down voter disenfranchisement laws giving back to some of these Americans – all of them ex-felons – the right to vote.
According to a report released by the Sentencing Project in late October, at least 16 states have made felony disenfranchisement laws less restrictive since 1997. “Arguments that once seemed to be compelling justifications for limiting the franchise appear now as relics of an antiquated, exclusionary past,” said Ryan S. King, author of the report.
Civil rights and criminal justice groups have always considered felony disenfranchisement laws to be unnecessary. “When someone has fully and irreversibly paid his debt to society, it is of the utmost importance that society returns the favor by restoring back to him his right to vote,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “It is absolutely pointless to free someone from prison but deny them the right to vote, since no one in a democracy is truly free unless they can participate in it to the fullest extent possible.”
From 2005 to 2006, nine states including Florida, Tennessee, Nebraska, and Rhode Island repealed felony disenfranchisement laws, which civil rights advocates view as critical steps forward.
A new Florida law will require detention facilities to provide a voter application form to people released from prison. Civil rights advocates believe this will remind ex-felons that their right to vote has been restored. The law is a significant departure from earlier attempts to make it more difficult for ex-felons to vote, which included a requirement that made individuals convicted of non-violent felonies undergo a separate hearing to regain their voting rights.
This year, Tennessee streamlined the restoration process for ex-felons by simplifying the language of its felony voter statute. Due to the confusing rhetoric of the original statute, a person convicted of a crime after 1981 was treated differently in the restoration process than someone convicted after 1981. Many consider the new law a big win for civil rights because it will make it easier for nearly 94,000 disenfranchised Tennesseans to regain their right to vote.
Nebraska made a big change by repealing its disenfranchisement laws. The state had one of the most restrictive disenfranchisement policies in the country until a bill was passed in March 2005 that will restore voting rights to more than 50,000 of its citizens. Prior to the bill’s passage, a felony conviction in the state of Nebraska meant a lifetime loss of the right to vote.
In an historic win for ex-felon voting rights, Rhode Islanders voted on November 7 for an amendment to state constitution that will restore voting rights to people on parole and probation. Prior to the amendment, Rhode Island was the only state in New England where any individual on parole or probation was prohibited from voting. The amendment passed two weeks after the release of the Sentencing Project‘s report urging lawmakers to implement similar reforms.
Despite these developments many states still have policies that bar ex-felons from voting. In 48 states, felons serving time in jail are denied the right to vote, and in 11 states a person convicted of a felony is barred for life.
Civil rights groups assert that the disparate impact felony disenfranchisement laws have on minority ex-felons is a major reason the laws should be repealed. “These policies serve not only as a reminder of this country’s legacy of electoral exclusionism, most evident in the post-Reconstruction era South, but continue to exacerbate racial inequalities in political participation that undermine democratic principles of equality in representation,” said King.
