Swaying Elections: If Felons Could Vote...

According to a Daily Beast report, a record 5.85 million convicted felons aren’t allowed to vote, according to a report out today (PDF) by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice research and advocacy group. That’s about 500,000 more than were disenfranchised in 2004—and potentially enough to decide this year’s tightly-contested presidential election.

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.

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Why Felons Can’t Vote

While volunteering to get folks registered to vote, I notice that many of the black males I approached declined to register. When I pressed them a bit further, they let me know that they were “felons” and are not allowed to vote. So how, for all these years, I never knew that “felons were not allowed to vote”.  I was surprised and puzzled as to why these American citizens had been disenfranchised. Right to my trusty computer I went to research the issue. Pull up a chair and let me share the information I found about this issue.

In an article from StraightDope.com, I learned the short answer that “felons can't vote because voting is a civil right and you forfeit certain rights, temporarily anyway, when convicted of a serious crime”. Here are some of the facts:

Convicted felons have been denied various privileges granted to other citizens going all the way back to ancient Rome and Greece--this practice is laced throughout the common law that serves as the basis for U.S. law.

Although some felons have been legally disenfranchised, others have not. Specifically, while only four states allow felons to vote while they are in prison, 18 allow felons to vote while they are on parole and 21 allow them to vote while on probation. Only 10 states permanently disenfranchise all felons and another handful do so to some ex-offenders or restore the ability to vote after a time limit. The Sentencing Project, a prisoner advocacy group, says that 13% of black males are disenfranchised under these laws. Clearly, this is a big deal.

In Richardson v. Ramirez , 418 U.S. 24 (1974), a majority of the Supreme Court found that the 14th Amendment gives the states clear permission to deny the vote to felons. William Rehnquist, then a green associate justice, wrote for the majority that this language (and the accompanying legislative history) made it clear that the states may abridge the rights of those convicted of "other crimes."

According to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy organization that promotes reforms in sentencing policy and alternatives to incarceration, 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws against convicted felons. An example of this injustice is that nearly 378,000 have lost their right to vote in Virginia--almost seven percent of the population.

Isn't it ironic that purpose of the 14th Amendment was to encourage states to extend voting rights to newly-freed slaves. There is a glimmer of hope. In Hunter v.Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), the court found that the right to disenfranchise felons was not absolute. Specifically, the court found that a disenfranchisement law reflecting "purposeful racial discrimination" was not constitutional. So if one could show that the pattern of convictions of blacks vs. whites in the war on drugs or otherwise showed "purposeful racial discrimination," one might be able to get Wild Bill and the Supremes to reconsider. When you go to argue the case, be sure to point out that states with tough anti-felon laws tend to be located in the South and that a lot of these laws were beefed up around the turn of the century to include crimes thought to be more commonly committed by blacks.

There's more information on felon-disenfranchisement laws from The Sentencing Project, along with information on sentencing policy, drug policy, racial disparity, women's issues, and other topics of importance. I appreciate their assistance with information in this article.

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