Revoking the right to vote from those who are incarcerated remains a vestige of Jim Crow.
A mechanism to suppress the vote of black and brown citizens, revoking the right to vote of prisoners remains a deeply racist and flawed tactic. One need only consider the case where a white convicted rapist who will not serve jail time will retain his right to vote (like the many violent offenders who do not get jail time) while millions who are incarcerated for minor drug offenses are stripped of their right to vote.
The issue has emerged as part of the Democratic primary discussion when a student at a town hall asked Bernie Sanders if he supports the right to vote to extend to prisoners. Bernie is on the side of the civil rights advocates; he believes prisoners should retain their right to vote.
In response to this and to push the issue further into the national discourse, over 70 civil rights group have written an open letter to Democratic presidential candidates urging them to support the right to vote extend to all citizens, even those incarcerated.
Seventy-three groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, Center on Race and Inequality NYU, Harvard Law School National Lawyers Guild, Racial Justice Action Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Greenpeace signed the letter.
More than 70 civil rights and advocacy groups are urging candidates seeking the presidency to allow people to vote while they are incarcerated, signing an open letter on Tuesday to push an issue already dividing the Democratic field.
Only Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said people incarcerated should be able to vote. He is the only 2020 presidential candidate so far to take that stance.
Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.) both have indicated they’re open to the idea, but want to focus on restoring voting rights to people after they’re released from prison. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said last week they are open to allowing nonviolent felons to vote in prison. Almost all of the other candidates seeking the Democratic nomination say they support restoring voting rights once someone either is released from prison or completes his or her criminal sentence.
Seventy-three groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Greenpeace signed the letter. The longstanding practice of banning people convicted of felonies from voting in the United States is “as senseless as it is cruel,” the groups wrote. They say the practice is tinged with racism and that many felon disenfranchisement laws were drafted in the Jim Crow south as a way to keep African American men from voting after they gained the right to vote.
Bernie Sanders is the first and so far only candidate who supports the right to vote for all citizens but Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have expressed they are open to the idea.
Vermont, Maine, Puerto Rico and over 30 countries do not strip the right to vote from those incarcerated.
This growing movement against felony disenfranchisement is a promising endorsement of American values, but it raises a key question: Why disenfranchise people in prison to begin with? Why not let them continue to vote while they are incarcerated?
Throughout Europe, people in prison retain their right to vote while incarcerated. Unlike most American states, these 28 countries have enacted various measures to ensure that incarcerated people remain fully engaged in society. People who are incarcerated in Germany, for example, not only vote, but earn wages on par with the rest of the workforce. They have the right to be incarcerated near their families, and, upon release, have access to a “network of rights meant to promote their integration with and membership inGerman society.”
In Europe, mandatory and permanent disenfranchisement is as unusual as it is anti-democratic. America, too, can honor every citizen’s right to vote and still flourish. Maine, Vermont, and Puerto Rico treat the right to vote as a bedrock democratic principle for all citizens, including those in prison. Advocates, people in prison, and even corrections officials say voting allows incarcerated people to maintain a sense of connection to the community and society at large, which in turn helps prepare them for life after prison. Protecting every American’s right to vote isn’t only popular, it’s also endorsed by those with the most intimate knowledge of our criminal legal system.
Dear Presidential Candidates:
When Brianna Ross was 19, she was convicted of a felony for stealing diapers for her son. At hers entencing hearing, a judge told Ross that she'd face a lifelong punishment for her mistake: She would never be allowed to vote. Ross said she was made to feel "empty and unimportant" for decades, as she was forced to sit on the sidelines of democracy. But her fortune finally changed in 2016, when VirginiaGov. Terry McAuliffe restored voting rights to Ross and more than 150,000 formerly incarceratedVirginians. A year later, at age 53, Ross participated in her first election, where she says she finally had the opportunity to say, "I count.
”The right to vote is a fundamental component of American citizenship. Yet millions of Americans have been stripped of this right and made to feel like second-class citizens because of laws that exclude people from voting due to a criminal conviction. An estimated 6.1 million American citizens with felony convictions were barred from voting in the 2016 presidential election alone, a race that was decided by just 79,316 votes. In short, felony disenfranchisement is not just anti-democratic and bad for public safety, it is an unpopular practice that sprang from the most shameful era of American history, a vestige of our past wildly out of step with international norms. And now is the moment for its abandonment.