The necessary, even noble, cause of protecting voter rights tends to rush by former prisoners. Fortunately, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is with the program. He calls out the counterproductive stupidity of permanent disenfranchisement of those who have served their sentences.
Yet in 11 states, even after release, with no probation or parole, former inmates are permanently barred from that most basic rite and right of democracy, casting ballots in elections. Those states are not all Southern, the stupidity spreads through the plains and Southwest. Even allegedly enlightened MA denies prisoners the vote.
Many people will think and even say, “Serve’s ’em right.” Honk. Wrong answer.
As Holder pointed out last week in a speech on justice reform, former prisoners denied real re-entry into society are three times (33% v. 11%) more likely to re-offend, harm society and return to prison. I recall decades ago interviewing the commissioner of corrections in South Carolina, the actually enlightened William D. Leeke. He said it best and plainly, that people are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. The loss of liberty is the penalty.
Today, at Left Ahead, Ryan Adams indulged me on this subject. He noted this is both long-hanging fruit and obvious to-do.
Our 23 minutes on the topic follows:
Yet, this subject gets little interest. Holder, among others, cites the evidence and analysis compiled by the Leadership Conference in its recent A Second Chance Re-Entry Report. Among its findings are that 5.8 million Americans are thus disenfranchised. One of 13 African-American men are, four times the rate of non-African-American men.
A key concept here is that the laws that allow this are perpetually punitive. It should be enough to know that doing this cuts off ex-prisoners from society and encourages their recidivism. Instead, many have some medieval concept or perhaps sense of schadenfreude that once you’ve done something wrong, there is no redemption, no forgiveness.
There’s a feeble attempt to remedy this nationwide through such efforts at the Democracy Restoration Act. Introduced in the U.S. House in June 2011, it is moldering in the Subcommittee on the Constitution. Lackaday, it had a single sponsor, John Conyers Jr. of MI and two co-sponsors, William Macy Clay of MO and Edolphus Towns of NY. Clearly, it goes nowhere until more co-sponsors sign or or a heavy-hitting Rep picks it up.
I’ve asked my guy, Rep. Mike Capuano, to get with this program.
We can hear the states-rights bozos saying the same thing as the anti-marriage-equality folk do with let-each-state do this. Yet we also know that on big issues Congress or the Supremes jump in, as they did with and Voting Rights Act and such.
We are the only democracy that pulls this crazy stuff. We need to knock it off. If you are supposed to pay your debt to society, then we need to clear the ledger.
Your second paragraph talks mostly about continued disenfranchisement post-release, but ends with the sentence, “Even allegedly enlightened MA denies prisoners the vote.” Does that mean that MA denies post-release enfranchisement post-sentence or only current prisoners? FWIW, I’m fine with current prisoners not voting but think those who have served their time should vote.
although I admittedly have little education in this particular area.
I think my preference for voting and felony is this:
1. You’re out of jail? You get full voting rights. This includes parole and probation.
2. You’re in jail? This is trickier. You may not exactly have access to timely information about the candidates themselves. How to choose? Are prisons obligated to make sure that you have access to sufficient information to make an informed choice? How much and what information is sufficient? Furthermore, in what jurisdiction do you vote? Where you used to live before prison, or where you live now (in prison)? If the latter, it could easily result in the prison population out-voting the local population on local matters, and that’s not a sensible outcome.
I’d like to think some kind of voting while in prison could be accommodated, but I can’t figure out how the details would work out. Any ideas?
…if you are in prison you have failed to uphold your end of the social contract, and therefore it seems to make sense that you forfeit your right to participate in the renewal of the contract via the franchise. The logistics I’m sure are workable, but that’s not what I was thinking of.
Voting is the most fundamental part of the social contract. If you’re in prison you can’t run for office, door-knock, or make phone calls. To me it would depend on why one is in prison — how fundamentally s/he broke the social contract. If it’s for something minor (sentence <10 years) keep the franchise. Otherwise revoke it.
In Massachusetts convicted felons can not vote while in prison, but they can vote after their incarceration ends. Only two states allow prisoners to use absentee ballots while in prison, Maine and Vermont.
http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286
http://felonvoting.procon.org/sourcefiles/massachusetts-law-felon-voting-2012.pdf
Those two comments are accurate.
You can see more detail in the linked report. Plus, here’s a link to the graphic that shows the states’ levels of disenfranchisement.