‘Justice Reform has returned thousands of felons to the voter rolls in Alabama.’ Will they swing the Senate election for Doug Jones?
In this special election for the Senate, Roy Moore’s defeat could come from the very people he sent to prison as a judge, poetic justice. Alabama’s newly enacted criminal justice reform legislation will enable felons to vote and their vote “could play a key role” in the outcome of this close race. “There are about 50,000 people in jails and state prisons in Alabama and about 60,000 more on probation.”
“For generations, the disenfranchisement of felons has resulted in tens of thousands of Alabamians, most of them black, being left out of the electoral process even after they have done their prison time and paid their debts to society. Under Alabama’s 1901 constitution, anyone convicted of a ‘crime of moral turpitude’ was prohibited from voting, but the state never defined what moral turpitude was. For decades, county registrars would all use different criteria and provide voters with conflicting information. Under Alabama’s vague definition of a felony, individual registrars have decided whether a given person could vote or not and, as a result, a disproportionate number of voters of color fell victim to arbitrary disenfranchisement.”
“In May, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law a bill, the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, championed by Kenneth Glasgow and other voting advocates. “We’re trying to right a wrong by giving people their rights back, who never should have lost them in the first place,” said Glasgow, founder of the Ordinary People Society, a nonprofit advocacy group that won a 2008 lawsuit to register people inside prisons — many of whom remained ineligible until this year.” The Ordinary People Society is a nonprofit community organization, Glasgow founded in 1999 after he served more than a decade in prison on drug charges.
The new law clarifies the crimes that permanently disenfranchise a former felon, opening the doors for tens of thousands of people with drug charges and other lower level felonies to register to vote.
"To ensure that no one is wrongly excluded from the electoral franchise,” the legislation also restored voting rights for Alabamians who are charged with felonies but have not been convicted. Even those with a disqualifying conviction may still be able to restore their voting rights by applying for a Certificate of Eligibility to Register to Vote at a local probation and parole office. One obvious irony here is that Moore has been accused of what could plausibly be sex crimes — one of the remaining categories of felony that still disenfranchises Alabama citizens from voting.
Alabama has done little to notify the former felons that they may be eligible to vote. On Monday the last day to register for the December 12 Senate election, Glasgow and his team of volunteers were working to make sure everyone with a criminal record and those in prison knows they are entitled to vote and to register them. “Danielle Lang, the deputy director of voting rights for the organization, said that it’s crucial that people like Glasgow fill in” since the state will not make the effort.
“ Glasgow said formerly incarcerated people ‘swarming the polls’ — like they did in Virginia — has the potential to swing the race to Doug Jones. We have the chance to do the same thing they did in Virginia,”
he said. “We can turn it blue. Well not blue, but we can add some color. Make it pink or purple.”