Minnesota Is Restoring the Voting Rights of Tens of Thousands
Elizer Darris has thought many times about how it must feel to hold one of the red “I VOTED” stickers Minnesota gives out at polling places.
He was sentenced to prison as a child, too young to have ever voted. He was released in 2016, but he has remained on probation ever since, in a state with exceptionally long probation terms. Minnesota strips people of their voting rights when they are convicted of a felony and only restores them upon completion of all parts of a sentence, which means that Darris still can’t vote.
That’s poised to change now. Minnesota’s legislature on Tuesday adopted House File 28, a bill termed Restore The Vote. It would grant ballot access to Minnesotans on parole or on probation, currently estimated to be roughly 50,000 people—though not to the more than 8,000 people in state prisons over a felony.
“That’s going to allow me to feel my humanity so much more,” Darris, who is now co-executive director of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, told Bolts. “Society has basically told me I’m locked away from having the most basic engagement with democracy. Well, now I will be engaged in the democratic experience.”
The legislature’s move on Tuesday sent the bill to Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat who has long supported this change. The bill’s lead sponsor, Bobby Joe Champion, the Democratic president of the Minnesota Senate, told Bolts he is certain Walz will sign it.
If and when he does, Minnesota would become the 25th state, plus Washington, D.C., to grant voting rights to anyone who is not presently incarcerated. (Maine, Vermont, and D.C., also allow anyone to vote from prison.) That milestone is the result of a rapid shift in blue-run states, with seven making this same move since 2018; North Carolina joined them last year due a court ruling that the GOP-held state supreme court may soon reverse.
https://boltsmag.org/minnesota-voting-rights-restoration/
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