{"id":86034,"date":"2018-12-03T13:08:26","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T18:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sentencing.net\/?p=86034"},"modified":"2019-11-05T16:19:09","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T21:19:09","slug":"sentencing-issue-conviction-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sentencing.net\/sentencing\/sentencing-issue-conviction-vote","title":{"rendered":"Should a Conviction Mean That You Can’t Vote?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t

Voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, and challenges to the Voting Rights Act are all attacks on citizens\u2019 right to vote, and on their vote being counted. Another voter suppression tactic \u2013 one that has been around for centuries \u2013 is the use of \u201cfelony disenfranchisement\u201d laws in the United States, i.e., laws that restrict the right to vote for people who have been convicted of a crime. Without question, this sentencing issue requires our attention, now more than ever.<\/p>\n

\"Sentencing

Sentencing Issue : Conviction Vote<\/p><\/div>\n

In fact, recently, The Sentencing Project, an organization focused on bringing awareness to important sentencing issues of the day, released a report<\/a> with regard to the current state of felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States. The report shows that much progress needs to be made on fixing the injustice of felony disenfranchisement laws as a sentencing issue, and as a human rights issue.<\/p>\n

Within the last two decades, two presidential candidates have won the popular vote in this country only to have the other <\/em>presidential candidate take the White House. While that Electoral College anomaly of the American political system is astounding in itself, the U.S. currently disenfranchises about 6.1 million citizens because they have been convicted of felonies. It is time to take a closer look at the history of felony disenfranchisement laws, and at the criminal sentencing issue of how the various states in the U.S. treat the right to vote for those citizens convicted of felony offenses.<\/p>\n

Felony Disenfranchisement: A Brief History<\/h2>\n

The colonies that would eventually become the United States inherited the common law concept of \u201ccivil death\u201d from England. \u201cCivil death\u201d was a set of criminal penalties that includes the revocation of a person\u2019s voting rights. While early colonial laws limited the penalty of disenfranchisement to only the most egregious criminal violations, the states began enacting stricter disenfranchisement laws after the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

Following the Civil War, felony disenfranchisement laws became much more common. Commentators suggest that the elimination of property ownership as a way to restrict voting rights might be the reason for the increased popularity of felony disenfranchisement laws. The wealthy class needed another way to hold on to political power. Felony disenfranchisement laws were a good way to achieve that goal. This created a real sentencing issue of the day, which has continued until present.<\/p>\n

After Reconstruction, several states in the South used disenfranchisement laws to prohibit African-American males from voting. They did so by targeting criminal offenses that were believed to be committed more frequently by African-Americans. For example, Mississippi party leaders wanted disenfranchisement as a penalty for burglary, theft, and arson, but not for robbery or murder. An Alabama politician who authored a felony disenfranchisement law stated that he \u201cestimated the crime of wife-beating alone would disqualify sixty percent of the Negroes.\u201d Those types of sentencing policies<\/a> would remain for over a century.<\/p>\n

Felony disenfranchisement laws today may or may not have such an obvious racial bias. The laws, however, still have the impact of removing the political power from communities of color.<\/p>\n

Numbers Don\u2019t Lie: Disenfranchisement Laws Impact Minorities the Most<\/h2>\n

Felony disenfranchisement laws have a disproportionate impact on minority communities. African-American citizens of voting age are more than four times<\/em> more likely to lose their right to vote than the rest of the adult population.<\/p>\n

Indeed, one in every 13 African-American adults in the U.S. cannot vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws. The number of disenfranchised African-American citizens jumps to one in five in the states of Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.<\/p>\n

The Sentencing Issue of Disenfranchisement is Growing<\/h2>\n

The rate of disenfranchisement is growing. It went from 1.17 million in 1976, to 6.1 million in 2016. It appears that the exponential rise in the U.S. prison population (the result of the country\u2019s misguided experiment in mass incarceration) has contributed to the overall rise in the disenfranchisement rate.<\/p>\n

Yet, the majority of citizens (77%) who cannot vote due to felony disenfranchisement laws are already out of jail, living in their communities, and are either on probation or parole, or have finished their sentences completely. In fact, half of all people disenfranchised, about 3.1 million, cannot vote because the states in which they reside (such as Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, and Iowa) restrict voting for life due to a felony conviction. Other states, by contrast, allow people to regain their voting rights after leaving prison, or after completion of parole or probation.<\/p>\n

Only two states in the U.S., Maine and Vermont, have no felony disenfranchisement restrictions.<\/p>\n

Benchmarking with Other Countries<\/h2>\n

The sentencing issue of disenfranchisement of felony offenders is harsher in the U.S. than in many other industrialized countries. In Canada, Israel, and South Africa, courts have ruled that any <\/em>conviction-related voting restriction is unconstitutional. Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights held that a blanket voting restriction on people in prison is a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Finally, almost half of the European countries allow all incarcerated individuals to vote.<\/p>\n

The Sentencing Issue of Disenfranchisement: Impact and Reform<\/h2>\n

It is reasonable to conclude that taking away the right to vote from people with felony convictions has impacted elections. One study<\/a> found that felony disenfranchisement likely affected the election results in seven U.S. Senate races from 1970 to 1998, as well as the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election. According to the study, even if disenfranchised votes in Florida alone were allowed to vote, Bush\u2019s narrow victory \u201cwould almost certainly have been reversed.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been some reforms in recent years. For example:<\/p>\n