Lift the Ban Against Felons Being Able to Vote

A year ago the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., prison reform group, issued a report that found that seven states permanently barred felons who have been released from custody from voting. With the gaping racial disparities in prison sentencing, the vote ban has fallen heaviest on black men. One out of four black males were disenfranchised by these laws. Civil libertarians screamed foul and called it a return to Jim Crow segregation days when Southern states routinely used poll taxes, literacy laws, political gerrymandering, physical harassment, threats and intimidation to bar blacks from the polls.

If they were appalled last year at the number of states that permanently ban these felons from voting, the news from the latest Sentencing Project is even worse: Two more states have approved permanent voting bans. And the racial disparity is even greater. Black men now account for one out of three released felons barred from the polls. Even worse, the number of blacks disenfranchised by these bans probably will soar higher.

More than 1 million blacks are now behind bars. The draconian drug sentencing laws, “three strikes” laws, racial profiling and the disparities in prison sentencing virtually ensure that more blacks will be arrested, convicted and sentenced more harshly than whites.

The Sentencing Project estimates that in the next few years 40% of black men will permanently be barred from the polls in the states with this ban.

This terrible, racially tinged policy wreaks much havoc on African Americans. It drastically cuts down the number of black elected officials, increases cynicism, if not outright loathing, by many young blacks for the criminal justice system and deprives black communities of vital funds and resources for badly needed services that could have come from their increased political strength.

The rationale for keeping and putting more bans on the books in more states is that they make it rougher on lawbreakers. This is nonsense. Many of the men who are stripped of their right to vote are not convicted murderers, rapists or robbers. They are not denied the vote because of a court-imposed sentence, because no states require that a judge formally bar an offender from voting as part of a criminal sentence because of the seriousness of the crime. In fact, many offenders don’t even serve a day in prison. They have been convicted of felonies such as auto theft or drug possession. They are more likely to receive a fine or probation.

Most of these offenders were young men when they committed their crimes. The chances are good that they didn’t become career criminals, but hold steady jobs, raise families and are responsible members of their communities. Yet the states that stamp them with the legal and social stigma of being a felon deprive them of their basic constitutional right to vote and relegate them to second-class citizenship in perpetuity.

This cruelly mocks the notion of rehabilitation and gives lie to the fondly repeated line that when criminals pay their debt to society, they deserve and will get a second chance.

While surveys show that a majority of Americans think that the felon voting ban is bad policy, only a handful of civil liberties groups and the NAACP in Virginia and Florida have challenged these restrictive laws in court. The only recourse that former lawbreakers have now in the states that permanently bar them from voting is to seek a pardon from the governor. This is a dead end for most. Governors read the fierce public mood on crime and know that many Americans see felons as pariahs who deserve any treatment they get. So few felons even bother to request a pardon.

Civil liberties groups have urged state legislatures to rescind the laws or at least resist the temptation to place new voting restrictions on the books. The only state to heed their call and do the right thing is Delaware. In June, lawmakers there restored voting rights to some former criminals.

The exclusion of thousands of blacks from the voting rolls 30 years after the civil rights movement waged a titanic battle to abolish Jim Crow voting bans is worse than a travesty of justice. It’s a horrid stain on American democracy. It’s a stain that state officials should immediately wipe away.