In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled that “No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws.” The following year, Lyndon B. Johnson echoed this statement at the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Quoting himself, Johnson said, “This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.”
Nearly 53 years after its passage, the Voting Right Act has effectively been gutted. Sure, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and white primaries are outlawed, but the black vote continues to be eroded by a sophisticated mechanism born out of the Jim Crow era: felony disenfranchisement. Or, in more colloquial terms, stripping felons of the right to vote.
There’s no denying that people should face consequences for the wrongs they’ve committed; this may very well be the first lesson we learn as children. But the question that needs to be asked is: Should felons who have served their sentences, paid their dues and re-entered their communities be deprived of a fundamental right of citizenship? Further to that, should those who belong to marginalized groups be stigmatized even more because of a felony conviction? The answer to both questions is “no.”
Everyone is deserving of a voice in a democracy. It’s a mark not only of citizenship, but of humanity and dignity. Only in the extremist of circumstances should it be withheld. A felony conviction handed down by a flawed, racially discriminatory justice system should not invalidate that voice. Presently, however, this is precisely the case.
According to a report released in 2016 by the Sentencing Project, a staggering 6.1 million Americans are either temporarily or permanently forbidden to vote; approximately 1 of every 40 qualified adults. Of this total, 77 percent aren’t even incarcerated. They live in our communities, working, going to school, paying taxes and raising families. This data is concerning, to say the least.
When racial disparities are looked at, the findings are undoubtedly more alarming. They may even make you question if we’re truly living in the 21st century.
One in thirteen African Americans is disenfranchised – a rate four times that of non-African Americans. Put differently, over 7.4 percent of the African American voting-age population is disenfranchised, compared with 1.8 percent of the non-African American population. This means that while African Americans comprise 13 percent of the general population, they account for more than 38 percent of the total disenfranchised population.
In Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, more than one in five African Americans is disenfranchised. Each of these states, along with seven others, permanently bars felons from voting. Only Maine and Vermont – the whitest states in the nation – have no felony disenfranchisement whatsoever. For a country that prides itself on constitutional justice, freedom, and equality, this is simply unacceptable.
It doesn’t take much inferential thinking to realize that felon disenfranchisement laws are designed to alienate black voters and destroy black communities. By disproportionately targeting African Americans, an already marginalized group is further isolated. They’re denied the dignity of a political voice and the power to affect electoral outcomes. They can’t even vote on policies that would directly impact them – such as laws that determine the eligibility of felons and ex-felons for public benefits.
It’s no secret that the United States doesn’t exactly have a sterling record when it comes to African American voting rights. The disproportionate impact of felon disenfranchisement laws on African Americans speaks to the lingering effects of this racist past. I can’t cover the entire history, so here’s the watered-down Cliff Notes version.
Laws barring felons from voting date to the colonial period, but it wasn’t until the Reconstruction Era that the scale of felon disenfranchisement exploded. The Reconstruction Era was a relatively short, yet extraordinary period of black advancement and progress. Federal legislation abolished slavery, granted full citizenship to African Americans, commanded equal protection of the laws, and prohibited the denial of the right to vote based on race.
The threat of a powerful black electorate was felt most acutely in the Southern states and sparked significant white backlash. White-supremacist lawmakers worked furiously to neutralize the black vote. They crafted laws and state constitutions that disenfranchised for offenses believed to be disproportionately committed by black people.
To highlight just how open white lawmakers were about their racist intentions, the president of Alabama’s Constitutional Convention of 1901 justified manipulating the ballot to avert the “menace of Negro domination.” And at the Virginia Constitutional Convention the following year, delegate Carter Glass said his intent was to “eliminate the darkey as a political factor.”
Legal challenges to felony disenfranchisement laws have largely fallen short. Despite these losses, there’s reason to remain hopeful, as several states have begun to adopt progressive agendas of voting rights restoration and racial justice.
New Jersey, a state where the black/white incarceration ratio is 12:1, now has the opportunity to do just that. Two Democratic senators, Ronald Rice and Sandra Cunningham, have introduced legislation to extend voting rights to convicted felons in prison, on parole, or on probation. Democratic Governor Phil Murphy pledged to expand voting rights during his campaign, and both chambers of the New Jersey legislature are controlled by Democrats, so it’s likely the bill will pass.
And this coming November, Florida residents will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would re-enfranchise felons who have completed their prison, probation or parole sentence. You could argue that this initiative doesn’t go far enough, as people convicted of murder or sexual offenses are excluded. But for a state that disenfranchises over 100,000 African Americans, this is an encouraging step forward.
It’s initiatives like these, that bring all citizens within the protective umbrella of the Constitution, that the rest of the nation must emulate. Otherwise, the Voting Rights Act will remain another empty promise by the United States.