Black Men Barred from the Ballot Box

March 28 - April 3, 2007 by Maya Harris, The Post Newspaper

There is a lot of confusion across the country about who can and cannot vote with a felony conviction because the laws are different in every state. In California, individuals with a felony conviction can vote except when they are in state prison or on parole.

Jim Crow Laws

In 1870, seeking to make good on the promise of equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation, the nation passed the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution extending the right to vote to former slaves. However, in the decades that followed, Jim Crow laws were enacted to erect barriers to the democratic participation of the new black electorate.

While poll taxes and literacy tests have long since been abandoned as un-American, nearly every state still disenfranchises people convicted of a felony offense for at least some period of time. Justified under the guise of being tough on crime, felony disenfranchisement laws remain the single greatest barrier excluding people of color from the political process.

Only two states, Maine and Vermont, let everyone vote regardless of a criminal conviction. The remaining states range from denying only incarcerated individuals the right to vote to imposing lifetime disenfranchisement, even if the individual has fully completed their sentence and is no longer under the supervision of the criminal justice system.

The result? Nearly 5 million people were barred from voting in the November 2004 election due to a felony conviction - almost 2 million of them were African Americans.

Impact on African American Men

Although they constitute only 8% of the general population, African-American men comprise more than one-third of the disenfranchised population. At the current rate and pattern of incarceration, Human Rights Watch estimates that three in ten of the next generation of black men will be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime and, in states with the most restrictive laws, 40% of black men are likely to permanently lose their right to vote.

Sadly, California mirrors these national trends. California law denies the right to vote to people who are in prison or on parole. As a result, more than a quarter million Californians are prohibited from voting - a significant majority are African American and Latino.

And until last December, even more Californians were being denied the right to vote - unlawfully.

Lawsuit to Protect Voting Rights

For more than 30 years, the California Secretary of State said that people on felony probation, including those in jail as a condition of probation, retained their voting rights. But, in 2005, the California Attorney General decided the opposite, effectively disenfranchising more than 145,000 individuals, mainly young African-American and Latino men.

The ACLU of Northern California, along with our co-counsel the Social Justice Law Project, filed a lawsuit last summer, League of Women Voters v. McPherson, to restore the voting rights of this wrongfully disenfranchised group. We argued that the language and legislative history of the California Constitution shows a clear intent to disenfranchise only people who are incarcerated in state prison or on parole - not those on felony probation in local county jails. In December 2006, the California Court of Appeals unanimously agreed, restoring the voting rights of the tens of thousands of Californians who were disenfranchised by the Attorney General's opinion.

Voting is one of the most precious rights in our democracy. Yet, the United States is the only democratic nation in the world that bans non-incarcerated individuals from voting. Many countries allow people in prison to vote.

It's time we reevaluate these policies of exclusion and fully realize our commitment to democratic inclusion. Every vote counts.

For more information on voting rights following a felony conviction, visit www.aclunc.org/vote, or call the ACLU-NC at 415.621.2493.