TomPaine: Free Indeed To Vote

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Free Indeed To Vote
Kara Gotsch
February 23, 2007


Kara Gotsch is the director of advocacy for The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform organization based in Washington, DC.

Andres Idarraga , a 29-year-old junior at Brown University and a prominent activist in Providence, finally won his right to vote on Election Day, 2006. Idarraga was incarcerated for six-and-a-half years and believes the right to vote is a significant and crucial aspect to rebuilding his life and to contributing to his community. He worked with voting rights organizations in Rhode Island for over a year to support a state ballot measure that restored the right to vote to individuals after they leave prison. When voters approved it, more than 15,000 citizens, including Idarraga, won back their right to vote. “I went to register to vote the other day,” he said recently. “It feels good to be a part of the democratic process.”

The Rhode Island campaign is but the latest victory in a national movement to expand voting rights to people with felony records—an estimated 5.3 million Americans. Forty-eight states (all but Maine and Vermont) and the District of Columbia prohibit inmates from voting while incarcerated for a felony offense. In 35 states, people on parole also cannot vote. And, in the dozen most regressive states, the right to vote can be permanently denied to people with felony records. Nationally, 74 percent of the disenfranchised population lives in the community, including two million who have completed their sentence.

During the Jim Crow era, disenfranchisement laws in southern states were revised to silence the political voice of newly emancipated slaves. Today, racial disparities in the criminal justice system contribute to dramatic rates of felony disenfranchisement for African Americans. Thirteen percent of black men are disenfranchised and as many as 40 percent of black men are projected to lose their right to vote in states that disenfranchise after completion of sentence. Disproportionate disenfranchisement in communities of color means the concerns of those communities are not fairly represented at the polls.

Momentum for disenfranchisement reform began 10 years ago when the Texas legislature and then Governor George W. Bush repealed a two-year waiting period required for vote restoration after completion of sentence. The change restored rights to an estimated 317,000 people. Since 1997, 16 states have taken steps to reform disenfranchisement laws, and more than 600,000 people have regained their voting rights. Polling suggests that the public supports these efforts, with eight in 10 Americans favoring voting rights for persons who have completed their sentence. Additional support has emerged from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, which recommended the restoration of voting rights to persons upon completion of sentence. Calls for reform are also endorsed by organizations like the American Correctional Association and American Bar Association.....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/23/free_indeed_to_vote.php