Should Felons Have the Right to Vote?
While Martin L. King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference marched through the hostile roads of Mississippi and Alabama, Malcolm took to the streets of Harlem preaching about the unfairness the government burdened the Black community with – especially the right to vote. In his mind it was either the “Ballot or the Bullet.”
Today, for hundreds of thousands of Black men that choice is not that simple. It seems their use of the bullet has erased their right to ever use a ballot.
This week, the United States Supreme Court reinforced that idea when it refused to hear the case against Florida. The argument would have challenged a 160-year-old law, which bans felons from exercising their right to vote.
While it seems just that a person who commits a felonious crime not be able to exercise the freedoms his or her choices limited, what about those who completed the punishment doled out for their crime?
Without comment, the nation’s highest court turned away the case Johnson versus Bush. The case has been
some four-years in the making. It stems from the controversial 2000 Presidential election. What makes this case interesting is that it wasn’t brought on behalf of those who were currently serving prison terms. It was taken up for those ex-convicts who has not only served their actual prison terms, but also completed parole or probation.
It’s estimated that the ban effects 10 percent of Black adults in Florida – but the impact could have been far greater. According to a Washington advocacy group the Sentencing Project, some 5 million people might have had their voting rights restored if the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.
Forty-eight states – excluding Maine and Vermont have enacted some restriction on voting by felons. However, Iowa is the only state, which has universally cleared the path for all ex-felons who have completed their prison terms to become eligible voters. Florida does have a process but it is complicated, expensive and not a very successful step for the aspiring voters.
Beyond the confusion the Supreme Court has instituted by leaving varied laws on state’s books – one previous case allowed ex-convicts to sue the state of Washington, while another case left a similar law in place – is the confusion left for society to grapple with.
It has always been the higher moral responsibility of our penal system to rehabilitate criminals to become productive citizens after they’ve served their time; however, such get-tough-on-crime legislation seems to slap that ideal in the face.
As reported in an earlier Kapitol Hill commentary, teens are increasingly being tried as adults (see: When Does Life End?). Does this mean a crime a child commits in Florida at the age of 13 now subjugates the teen to never exercising a basic right?
In seems apparent that the origination of such laws are embedded with politics. As the travesty of the 1950s & 60s taught us – politics should have no place near the right to enter the voting booth.
That very notion seems to have others scratching their heads about what is going on within the cubicles at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
It seems the highly criticized approval of Georgia’s new voter ID law was initially rejected for the very reasons the opposition claimed it should have been in the first place – it would inadvertently discriminate against African-Americans. However, immediately following that initial recommendation, the conclusion was dismissed and approved.
In an August 25th memo obtained by the Washington Post, a panel of five lawyers called the law flawed and regressive. However, the next day, the chief of the department informed the state legislature the program would not be held back from approval.
The Justice Department dismissed the conflict by calling it a “healthy debate” and suggesting there wasn’t a conflict at all. “It is the chief’s responsibility to report recommendations to the Attorney General.” Eric Holland was quoted as saying.
Leaving one to wonder if it’s the Chief’s responsibility to ignore the recommendation of his staff?
The controversial law would essentially force people to obtain an additional identification card in order to vote.
A federal district judge has placed a stay on the law and an appeal to the entire district court failed. The judges agreed that such a law does amount to a Jim Crow era style poll-tax.
It would seem luckily, for poor and disenfranchised African-Americans in Georgia, justice is in this particular case color-blind.
Unfortunately it seems, for ex-felons who desire to re-enter society and add some contribution through the electoral process, legal sight on this issue is still blurry
