Abstract

The Last Disenfranchised Class

The author reports on a growing movement to restore suffrage to U.S. prisoners and ex-convicts. An exploding prison population means nearly 5 million people are unable to vote because they have been convicted of a felony--defined as any crime that carries a sentence of a year or more in prison. Today felons and former felons are the single largest group currently barred by law from voting in the United States. Voting rights are left up to the states, so the laws vary. Only Maine and Vermont allow prisoners to vote. Most states take the right away from those in prison and also those on parole or probation. While most states also return the right to vote once the terms of a sentence have been completed, thirteen states, five of them in the South, take voting rights away for life--a punishment extremely rare in the rest of the Western world. As a result, there are now more ex-prisoners than prisoners in the United States who can't vote. Civil rights advocates predict that voting rights for prisoners and ex-prisoners will be the next US suffrage movement, as lawyers, prison advocates, voting rights groups and foundations have recently begun to join forces and take up the cause. American laws seem to be out of sync with those of other countries in their severity. Prisoners never lose their right to vote in eighteen countries across Europe. In the United States the laws affect large numbers of people, and black people in particular. Because whites are more likely to be offered plea bargains and alternative sentences, they are less likely to spend time in prison and lose the right to vote, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Today the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has taken the lead on challenging the voting restriction in court. The suit charges that the law is discriminatory and unconstitutional.