Felon Disfranchisement Bars Many from VotingBy Rab, LisaLisa RabVol. 23, No. 2, 2001 pp. 22-25More than 200,000 people could not vote in Florida's presidential election last year because of laws barring ex-felons from voting. Similar laws across the country prevented 1.4 million people from casting their ballots, according to data compiled by the Sentencing Project, an independent criminal justice policy group. Every state in the South prohibits people currently imprisoned for a felony from voting, and all except for Louisiana disfranchise people on probation and parole. Most states make it nearly impossible for felons to regain their voting rights after they have served their time; in Alabama, Florida, and Kentucky they are disfranchised for life unless they receive a pardon from the governor. Because of the racial make-up of the convicted felon population in the U.S., these laws disproportionately disfranchise African Americans. The result, according to the Sentencing Project, is that 17.5 percent of black males in the South did not have the right to vote in 1998.Florida has more disfranchised ex-felons than any state in the nation. But activists were concerned about the voting rights of felons long before the November election exposed the disfranchisement of thousands of Floridians. In 1998, the Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch published a report together on "The Impact of Felony Disfranchisement Laws in the United States." In September 2000, two months before the election, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a suit in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida challenging the constitutionality of laws that disfranchise ex-felons. Florida's haphazard purging of the voter registration rolls--which disfranchised many people who were listed incorrectly as felons--attracted national media attention to the issue. Taking advantage of the heightened public awareness, legislators all over the South introduced a flurry of bills to restore the voting rights of felons. But their efforts were rarely successful. The bills that did pass achieved only minor procedural changes to the complex process of applying for a restoration of voting rights.A Complex ProcessThe process for regaining voting rights varies from state to state, but it is always complicated and seldom explained to former felons. In Florida, for example, ex-felons must apply to the Office of Executive Clemency, which then makes a recommendation to the governor and the partisan cabinet. It is a high level process involving a lot of paperwork that takes "at least six months, if you're persistent," according Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho.Florida, like many other states, requires that ex-felons be informed about this application process, but "that's simply not the case" in reality, Sancho says. Felons are allowed to apply for the restoration of their rights immediately upon completion of their sentence, and the Department of Corrections is supposed to provide them with the necessary paperwork to begin the process, but Sancho says the Department does not do that. The ACLU recently filed a suit contending that the Florida Department of Corrections is not fulfilling its obligation under current law to aid ex-felons in seeking clemency.Slight ProgressSince the ban on voting rights for ex-felons is written in the constitution of many states, it is a difficult law for legislators to change. Instead of trying to amend the constitution to automatically restore voting rights, they often choose to make smaller changes to the election code that will make the restoration process easier.Of the Southern states in the last session, only Kentucky passed legislation that is intended to facilitate the process ex-felons go through when applying to have their voting rights restored. Kentucky's constitution dictates that felons can only regain their voting rights through gubernatorial action. The General Assembly, however, passed a law this year that is intended to simplify and streamline the process of applying for a gubernatorial pardon. "It made it easier to get to the governor's desk so the governor can act," says State Senator Gerald Neal.The Arkansas constitution allows felons to regain their voting rights upon completion of their sentence (including jail time, probation, and parole). The legislature, however, passed a law this year that requires applicants to provide the county clerk with evidence that they have completed their sentence, their probation, and paid all their fees before they can register to vote. Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina currently restore the
voting rights of felons after they have completed their sentences,
without requiring a waiting period. Of the remaining Southern states,
four introduced progressive legislation this session that failed to
pass. Three states, including South Carolina, introduced legislation
that would have further restricted felons' rights. Tennessee did not introduce any legislation in 2001 regarding the voting rights of felons.Strategies for RestorationFor years without success, African-American activist groups and sympathetic legislators in Alabama have been introducing legislation to help restore the voting rights of felons, . Currently, ex-felons must apply to have their rights restored by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, and are required to provide a DNA sample to the state Department of Forensics as part of the application process. According to the Sentencing Project, 31 percent of black males in Alabama were disfranchised by felony convictions in 1998. This year, voting rights advocates developed a different strategy for pushing ex-felon enfranchisement legislation through the Alabama General Assembly. They introduced a bill that would have restored the voting rights of felons who had completed their sentence, and moved it through the House with a Republican bill that would have required voters to show some form of identification at the polls. The two bills moved together in order to gain bipartisan support for two issues that usually split legislators along party lines. Both bills passed the House, but died because the Senate did not act on them before the session ended.In Virginia, Democrats introduced three bills that would have simplified what Kent Willis, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia calls, "One of the most, if not the most, difficult procedures for restoration of voting rights in the nation."Virginia, like Kentucky, has a constitutional provision that gives the governor the final say in restoring voting rights. For the last five or six years, Willis says, legislators have been introducing bills to make the process of obtaining the governor's approval easier, but none of them were given serious consideration until last year. In 2000, the General Assembly passed a law allowing certain ex-felons to apply to the circuit court for the restoration of their voting rights five years after completing their sentence; felony drug offenders must wait seven years to apply. The circuit court option is an alternative for those who would rather go through the courts than the governor's office, but all court decisions are still subject to the governor's approval.That procedural reform indicated an important change in the largely
conservative General Assembly's attitude toward the issue of ex-felons
voting. "The fact that last year there was a bill that
passed was very good news,"  says Willis. Legislators
introduced three bills this year that would have further simplified
the restoration process, and although none of them passed, they did
win substantial support. "Compared to four or five years ago,"
observes Willis, "when these bills would get passed by...people are
talking about the issue and the bills are garnering some
votes."Rosanna Bencoach, policy manager for the Virginia State
Board of Elections, explains that the process of getting voting rights
restored is time consuming. After waiting a certain number of years
before applying, the ex-felon must then provide letters of
recommendation, a letter from the probation officer, and a copy of the
court record to the governor. "But it's not a difficult process if you
understand it."Willis, however, says the process is so
complicated he does not understand it himself. He thinks the only way
to really simplify the process is to restore voting rights
automatically, without gubernatorial approval. "The big hump will be
when legislators are willing to address the constitutional issue. When
that happens there's a chance for dramatic reform--but that's probably
many years down the road."Moving
BackwardsSome Southern states considered legislation in
the last session that would have worsened the situation for
ex-felons. One of the most extreme examples was in Mississippi,
where legislators introduced House and Senate bills that would have
denied all felons the right to vote unconditionally for the rest of
their lives. Neither bill made it out of committee. In 1998, the
Sentencing Project found that 28.6 percent of black males in
Mississippi were disfranchised by laws that prohibit anyone ever
convicted of crimes such as theft, murder, forgery, and rape from
voting. Currently, people who commit those crimes can petition the
legislature to have their voting rights restored after they've served
their time.A similar bill that would have disfranchised felons
for life was introduced in Texas, but stalled in a House
subcommittee. Since 1997, Texas law has restored the voting rights of
felons after completion of their sentence. Prior to that time, they
were required to wait five years after completing their sentence
before applying to have their rights restored.In South
Carolina, felons currently regain their voting rights after sentence
completion, but a bill was introduced this year that would require
them to wait fifteen years after completing their sentence to regain
the vote, unless they were pardoned. According to Donna Royson, deputy
director of the South Carolina Election Commission, candidates who are
ex-felons have to wait fifteen years before they can run for political
office. The bill passed the House and was on the contested calendar in
the Senate when the session ended.Political ResistanceAccording to the Brennan
Center, 4.6 percent of Florida's voting age population cannot vote
because of the felon disfranchisement law, and at least one in four
black men is unable to vote due to a current or past
conviction.The voting ban for ex-felons is part of Florida's
constitution, as it is in Kentucky and Virginia. In the 2001 session,
two separate bills were proposed in the Florida legislature regarding
felons' voting rights. One bill was an amendment to take the ban out
of the constitution and allow statutes to be passed restoring the
voting rights of felons. The other bill was the actual statute that
would have restored the voting rights of felons who had served their
time. A provision that would have restored voting rights to felons was also originally included in the Senate version
of the major election reform bill that the Florida legislature passed
in May. Senator Bill Posey, a Republican sponsor of that bill,
explained that the provision could not have been implemented if the
constitutional amendment bill failed to pass, because it was only a
statute. So, when he saw that the constitutional amendment was not
going to pass the House, he saw no reason keep the provision in his
bill. It was dropped in conference committee negotiations with the
House. To Sancho, a Democrat, the reason that amendment and the
other felon bills did not pass the Florida General Assembly this year
is simple. "The Republicans don't want to broaden the
franchise."Since nine out of ten African-American voters chose
the Democratic candidate on the ballot last November, Sancho thinks
Republican resistance to restoring the voting rights of felons is
"probably political more than anything else." Florida's House, Senate,
and Governor's office are all Republican-controlled.Florida's
prohibition of voting rights for ex-felons was adopted three years
after the Civil War, the Brennan Center says, as "one of many
Reconstruction-era tactics to undermine the political power of
ex-slaves." This was the case in other states as well. Mississippi's
provision regarding the voting rights of criminals, from its 1890
Constitution, was intended to discriminate against black felons, as
was Alabama's provision from 1901.In their lawsuit, the Brennan
Center argues that because of its discriminatory intent and effect,
Florida's law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourtheenth
Amendment and the Voting Rights Act. "As much as we want to
believe that institutionalized racial discrimination is in our past,
that's not true," Nancy Northrup, Director of the Brennan Center's
Democracy Program, says. "More work must be done to ensure full
democratic rights for all our citizens.Lisa Rab is a journalism student at Emory University
in Atlanta.