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Restore Voting Rights to Ex-Felons

Currently one in forty-one Americans have lost their voting rights because of a criminal conviction. That is over 5 million people who are denied the right to vote. Of those, over 2 million have completed their sentence of imprisonment, parole, or probation. These statistics are even more staggering in an international perspective. While the US has only 5% of the world's population, it has almost 50% of those who are prevented from voting by a criminal conviction. This is the product both of our broad disenfranchisement rules and our exploded criminal justice system. The racial and ethnic inequity of felon disenfranchisement is striking. One in eight black men are disenfranchised by these laws, a rate seven times the national average. In some states it is one in four.

Over 60% of Americans support restoring the right to vote after release from prison, and a similar number think that the right to vote is an important factor in a person's successful reintegration after prison. This view is shared by several law enforcement organizations. The American Correctional Association, made up largely of professionals in the criminal justice field, has passed a resolution stating that restoring voting rights is critical to reintegration of ex-prisoners into public life: “[D]isenfranchisement laws work against the successful reentry of offenders as responsible, productive citizens into the community.”

The Sentencing Project — Felony Disenfranchisement
Brennan Center for Justice — Voting After Criminal Conviction
ACLU — Felon Enfranchisement
Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza — Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy

From the Dispatch

9th Circuit Strikes Down Washington's Felon Voting Law

Jan 14, 2010

Last week the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of disenfranchised felons in Washington, holding in a summary judgment order that the state's practice of denying the vote to felons violates the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA). Notably, instead of basing their argument on the nature of the felon disenfranchisement law at issue, the case centered on the interaction between felon disenfranchisement and the discrimination in the criminal justice system itself.
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Path Breaking Voter Registration Modernization Bill is Vetoed by Minnesota Governor Pawlenty

May 28, 2009

Minnesota legislators passed a landmark voter registration modernization bill recently that would, absent a veto, have registered or updated the registration of voters automatically when they applied for a driver's license, learner's permit or ID card. It would also use information in motor vehicle and corrections databases to verify and maintain voter rolls. This legislation, sponsored by Rep. Steve Simon and Sen. John Marty, would have made Minnesota the first state in the nation to proactively register voters, and made it among the most advanced in maintaining clean, accurate voter rolls. The bill was designed to build on the state's already first-in-the-nation portability bill, which requires automatic updates to voter registrations based on changes of address.
However, Governor Pawlenty vetoed this historic legislation last week...
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