By some estimates, the election could be decided by a margin of roughly two points, or a mere 2.5 million people. The disenfranchised felon voting block is “absolutely enough” to swing an election, says Sasha Abramsky, author of Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House.
Consider the case of the ballots in Florida in 2000. Florida’s laws preventing convicted felons from voting meant that some 750,000 people, including those still in prison, on probation or parole, didn’t get a say in who would be president. Since the election was decided by 537 votes, Abramsky estimates that if just 1% of the disenfranchised felon population had voted, 60% to 40% for Al Gore over George W. Bush, Gore would have won. .
Laws that keep felons and others away from the polls “have their roots in Jim Crow laws, and were passed along with relics like literacy tests and poll taxes,” says Lee Rowland, counsel for the NYU Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program. This week, Eric Holder called Texas’ new voter ID law, which requires people to show an ID every time they vote, rather than do a one-time registration, a “poll tax” in an address at the NAACP national convention.
Statistics show that felon disenfranchisement disproportionately affect African-Americans, with 7.7% of the total African-American population denied the vote as a result, according to the Sentencing Project. That’s 1 out of every 13 black Americans. Rowland says stricter felon disenfranchisement laws are often made as a “political calculations” that “skew the electorate.”
Felon disenfranchisement varies widely between states. On one end of the spectrum, Maine and Vermont don’t link voting rights to criminal records. On the other end, Iowa, Florida, Virginia and Kentucky have laws permanently disenfranchising anyone who has been convicted of a felony unless approved on an individual basis by the state government.
After the 2010 interim elections, Florida and Iowa’s newly elected Republican Governors, Rick Scott and Terry E. Branstad, toughened felon disenfranchisement laws within their first years in office. Scott reversed former Florida governor Charlie Christ’s 2007 procedures restoring voting rights to ex-felons and instituted a minimum five-year waiting law before former felons can begin the process of regaining their vote in Florida.
The report shows that in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia and Tennessee, over 7% of the adult population is disenfranchised. In Florida, Kentucky and Virginia, more than one in five African-Americans is disenfranchised.
Related Source Article:
If Felons Could Vote, Eliza Shapiro, The Daily Beast
Statistics show that felon disenfranchisement disproportionately affect African-Americans, with 7.7% of the total African-American population denied the vote as a result, according to the Sentencing Project. That’s 1 out of every 13 black Americans. Rowland says stricter felon disenfranchisement laws are often made as a “political calculations” that “skew the electorate.”
 |
| FL Gov. Rick Scott |
After the 2010 interim elections, Florida and Iowa’s newly elected Republican Governors, Rick Scott and Terry E. Branstad, toughened felon disenfranchisement laws within their first years in office. Scott reversed former Florida governor Charlie Christ’s 2007 procedures restoring voting rights to ex-felons and instituted a minimum five-year waiting law before former felons can begin the process of regaining their vote in Florida.
The report shows that in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia and Tennessee, over 7% of the adult population is disenfranchised. In Florida, Kentucky and Virginia, more than one in five African-Americans is disenfranchised.
Related Source Article:
If Felons Could Vote, Eliza Shapiro, The Daily Beast
0 comments:
Post a Comment