Slavery to Prison, Disenfranchisement Plagues America’s Ballot Box

December 1, 2005 by Maya Harris,

In 1870, seeking to make good on the promise of equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence and spawned by the 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, a variety of Jim Crow laws were enacted to systematically erect barriers to the democratic participation of the new black electorate. Over a century later, one remnant of those exclusionary laws remains on the books and continues to deny scores of African Americans the right to vote: felony disenfranchisement.

While poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses have long since been abandoned as un-American, nearly every state in the Union—Maine and Vermont being the only exceptions—disenfranchises people convicted of a felony offense. In many states, the voting prohibition continues even though the individual has fully paid his or her debt to society. Their present-day use justified under the guise of being tough on crime, felony disenfranchisement laws remain the single greatest instrument excluding people of color from the political process.

48 states prohibit people in prison from voting; 32 additionally disenfranchise people on probation and/or parole. In thirteen states, a felony conviction can result in a lifetime ban. 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.

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.

Latinos are not far behind. In 2003, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) surveyed 10 states and discovered a half million Latino citizens disenfranchised in those states alone.

California mirrors these national trends. As a result of state laws that disenfranchise people while in prison or on parole, over 288,000 Californians were prohibited from voting as of 2000—a significant majority of whom are African American and Latino.

Most of these individuals are not even incarcerated. About 3 million of the disenfranchised are people living in their home communities, either on probation or parole or having fully completed their sentences. The vast majority were convicted of a nonviolent crime, whether simple drug possession, shoplifting or writing a bad check.

Moreover, an untold number of people locked out of the voting booth pursuant to these laws have not been convicted of a felony at all.

It is now well-known that Florida officials, acting under that state’s felony disenfranchisement laws, purged the 2000 presidential election voter lists of thousands of citizens who were falsely attributed to having felony criminal records. Less known is the fact that it happened in Florida again this year. Community advocates secured a court order forcing pre-election disclosure of Florida’s 2004 purge list and discovered that, once again, the list was riddled with inaccuracies. When the errors were publicized, the state withdrew its purge list.

And Florida may be just the tip of the iceberg. Voter purges are occurring in states across the country with virtually no standards, oversight or accountability. An October 2004 report from the ACLU, Demos, and the Right to Vote coalition, Purged!, surveyed purge processes in fifteen states, including California. None of the states had specific or minimum criteria for matching felony conviction lists with voter lists to ensure that the right person is being purged from the voter rolls, and two-thirds of the states do not require that voters be notified that they are being purged. As a result, voters are denied the opportunity to contest erroneous purges and may not even find out that they have been purged until it is too late to do anything about it.

Voting is one of the most precious rights in our democracy. Yet, today, the United States remains the only democratic nation in the world that bans non-incarcerated individuals from voting. Many countries also allow people in prison to vote, including Canada, South Africa, France, Israel, and Japan.

Felony disenfranchisement makes our nation no safer, no stronger, no greater—nor more just. It’s time we reevaluate these policies of exclusion and fully realize our commitment to democratic inclusion.

Felony Disenfranchisement State Report Cards  A+ Maine and Vermont never strip away voting rights due to felony convictions.  B Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah and the District of Columbia deny the vote to inmates, but allow citizens to vote who are out of prison, on probation, or on parole.  D California, Colorado, Connecticut, and New York only allow people on probation to vote. Parolees and those in prison are disenfranchised.  D- Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin disenfranchise all citizens on probation, in prison and on parole.  F Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming effectively take away the vote for life from all or some citizens with felony convictions, including those who have fully completed the terms of their sentence. Some of these states may restore voting rights through a lengthy and difficult pardon, appeal, or clemency process.

Compiled by Demos, a national nonpartisan public policy organization, available at http://www.demos-usa.org