The Boston Globe
October 4, 2004
Disenfranhised Citizens
A Globe Editorial
MILLIONS OF Americans have lost the right to vote, at least temporarily -- a
denial of an essential element of citizenship. Yet there's no great outcry,
because they are prisoners or ex-convicts. Human rights organizations that
struggle to restore them to the voting rolls are performing a great service by
refusing to accept the marginalization implied by loss of suffrage.
Practices vary around the country, with two states -- Maine and Vermont --
allowing prisoners to vote while they are serving time. In Massachusetts, where
prisoners had been able to vote since the 1970s, voters passed a constitutional
amendment in 2000 to keep people in prison from casting ballots. Seven states --
Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, Mississippi, and Virginia -- bar
people convicted of serious offenses from voting for life.
Any restriction on voting would seem to be a violation of the 14th Amendment
to the Constitution, under which every American is guaranteed equal protection
under the law. The amendment, however, provides a loophole that allows states to
restrict voting "for participation in rebellion, or other crime."
In 1870, two years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, fewer than 33,000
people were in state and federal prisons. In mid-2003, in the latest count by
the Justice Department, 1.458 million people were incarcerated. An
article in the American Sociological Review estimates that at the end of 2000,
4.68 million people were being denied the vote as a result of a criminal record.
What had been a quirk of law has become a major barrier to the political
process.
A disproportionate number of disfranchised are black -- 1.8 million, the
article said. This raises civil rights issues, which the Supreme Court has
barely addressed.
In Florida, the loss of voting rights by 827,207 people -- 256,392 of them
black -- likely made a difference in George Bush's contested victory over Al
Gore in 2000. This year, most of these people remain off the rolls, but the
Brennan Center for Justice in New York succeeded in discouraging Florida
officials from using flawed lists to purge voters.
The prohibition against voting offers a perennial incentive to electoral
mischief. In Ohio, local registrars were telling former prisoners that they
could not vote, even though under law they were free to do so once they were
released. Despite a settlement reached with the Prison Reform Advocacy Center
last month, the state has reneged on an agreement to provide accurate
information.
In Massachusetts, the Correction Department is informing inmates they cannot
vote, but it has no plans to remind them that they can, and ought to, after
release. The department should include this information in its prerelease
program. Without this reminder, the in-prison ban could become a lifelong
disincentive. Offenders who pay their debt to society should be restored to
active citizenship.
Civil liberties groups are trying to change the Florida Constitution to end
the ban there, but disenfranchisement is ingrained throughout the country, and a
federal amendment is needed. Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of
Illinois, has filed an amendment to specify that everyone in the country 18 or
over has the right to vote. The bias against convicts is so strong, however,
that it might have a better chance of passing if it excluded felons still
serving their sentences.
Restoring the vote to former prisoners would demonstrate that American
democracy is secure enough to reach out to those traditionally excluded from the
privileges and power that flow from participation in the electoral process.
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