1 strike and you're out
scouting report on felony disenfranchisement
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April 27, 2016 - Last week, Virginia Governor Terry Mcauliffe issued an executive order to restore the voting rights to over 200,000 convicted felons in his state. The Democratic Governor stated that this was an effort to address the disproportionate effects felony disenfranchisement (i.e., felons can't vote in local, state, or federal elections) has on African Americans and other minority groups; his Republican opponents say that the executive order is just a partisan gambit to help the Democratic nominee for president win a crucial swing state in the general election. (They suggest that these 200,000 new voters will disproportionately register as Democrats.)
The issue has reignited a national debate about whether or not felony convictions should result in the loss of voting rights. No fewer than six different conditions exist across the country regarding convictions and voting rights(see chart here). Maine and Vermont are the least restrictive because they allow everyone, including currently-incarcerated felons, the right to vote. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Florida, Kentucky, and Iowa impose lifetime voting bans on anyone convicted of a felony--the only exception is if the felon can convince their Governor to pardon them after they have completed their sentence. |
Virginia Governor Terry Mcauliffe
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When we add it all up, approximately 5.8 million people in the United States are currently denied some or all of their voting rights due to felony convictions. In states like Florida, this represents almost 10% of the voting age population, and approximately 1 in 5 black adults will never vote again in that state under current law.
In our age of mass incarceration, the past few decades have seen the prison population skyrocket. However, this issue reaches back to the nation’s founding. The U.S. Constitution, as it was originally written, left the states in charge of who got the vote. Starting in 1792 and continuing until the Civil War, states began drafting constitutions that imposed bans on a relatively small list of serious criminal offenses. Kentucky banned those convicted of “infamous crimes," Louisiana took away suffrage from anyone “engaged in a duel with deadly weapons,” and Wisconsin boldly punished anyone convicted of “betting on elections” with a lifetime voting ban.
Things changed once the federal government began to weigh in on the issue--with the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870, newly freed slaves were able to vote for the first time. However, as the federal government began to expand voter eligibility, the states were working hard to limit it. Poll taxes and literacy tests were passed in swift succession to state constitutions that also denied voting rights to vagrants, miscegenators, and those engaged in activities that broadly fell under the definition of “moral turpitude.”
Thanks to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, as well as a number of key Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s and 1980s, voting restrictions that can be proven to be racially motivated have been declared unconstitutional. However, the right for states to maintain bans on convicted felons has been upheld. However, the question of racially-motivated restrictions has led to many states deciding on many different definitions of the types of crimes that should restrict a criminal’s voting future.
At least 23 states have reformed their felony restrictions over the past few decades; recently, the greatest changes have been happening due to gubernatorial executive orders (like the one Governor Mcauliffe issued last week). One issue with this is that executive orders can be easily overturned: felons in Iowa and Florida were granted their voting rights by executive orders in the mid-2000s only to see them taken away again by countermanding executive orders when new Governors were elected.
Despite the partisan history of this issue, there is new hope for a consensus. Support for criminal justice reform from the likes of Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers, suggests that Republicans and Democrats alike might follow in Virginia’s (or maybe even Maine’s and Vermont’s) footsteps in returning voting rights to people, regardless of their criminal pasts.
In our age of mass incarceration, the past few decades have seen the prison population skyrocket. However, this issue reaches back to the nation’s founding. The U.S. Constitution, as it was originally written, left the states in charge of who got the vote. Starting in 1792 and continuing until the Civil War, states began drafting constitutions that imposed bans on a relatively small list of serious criminal offenses. Kentucky banned those convicted of “infamous crimes," Louisiana took away suffrage from anyone “engaged in a duel with deadly weapons,” and Wisconsin boldly punished anyone convicted of “betting on elections” with a lifetime voting ban.
Things changed once the federal government began to weigh in on the issue--with the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870, newly freed slaves were able to vote for the first time. However, as the federal government began to expand voter eligibility, the states were working hard to limit it. Poll taxes and literacy tests were passed in swift succession to state constitutions that also denied voting rights to vagrants, miscegenators, and those engaged in activities that broadly fell under the definition of “moral turpitude.”
Thanks to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, as well as a number of key Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s and 1980s, voting restrictions that can be proven to be racially motivated have been declared unconstitutional. However, the right for states to maintain bans on convicted felons has been upheld. However, the question of racially-motivated restrictions has led to many states deciding on many different definitions of the types of crimes that should restrict a criminal’s voting future.
At least 23 states have reformed their felony restrictions over the past few decades; recently, the greatest changes have been happening due to gubernatorial executive orders (like the one Governor Mcauliffe issued last week). One issue with this is that executive orders can be easily overturned: felons in Iowa and Florida were granted their voting rights by executive orders in the mid-2000s only to see them taken away again by countermanding executive orders when new Governors were elected.
Despite the partisan history of this issue, there is new hope for a consensus. Support for criminal justice reform from the likes of Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers, suggests that Republicans and Democrats alike might follow in Virginia’s (or maybe even Maine’s and Vermont’s) footsteps in returning voting rights to people, regardless of their criminal pasts.