SUNS  4307 Thursday 22 October 1998



United States: Voteless ex-convicts number millions


New York, Oct 22 (IPS//Lisa Vives) -- Nearly 4 million Americans will be barred from voting in elections next month because of a maze of local laws penalising criminals convicted of felonies,
according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The laws particularly penalise black men, the organisations says in its report released here Thursday. In seven states, according, "a staggering one in four black men is permanently disenfranchised. In two states, Alabama and Florida, the ratio is one in three."

Almost every state in the United States denies prisoners the right to vote, the report notes. But 14 states bar criminal offenders from voting even after they have finished their sentences.

"These people have paid their debt to society," said Jamie Fellner, associate counsel at the New York-based Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. "No other country in the world takes away the right to vote for life."

One federal judge cited in the report, Henry Wingate, lamented that disenfranchised criminals "must sit idly by while others elect his civil leaders and while others choose the fiscal and governmental
policies which will govern him and his family."

The report 'Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States', is the first state-by-state analysis of the impact of U.S. felony disenfranchisement laws.

Disenfranchisement, or loss of the right to vote, according to the authors, is a practice left over from medieval times when offenders were banished from the community and suffered "civil death."  

Brought from Europe to the colonies, the practice was revived at the end of the 19th century by disgruntled whites in a number of Southern states who used this measure along with other ostensibly race-neutral voting restrictions to exclude African Americans from voting.

However, in the twilight of the 20th century, the rights group argues that no purpose is served by denying these citizens the right to vote. Worse still, the right to vote can be lost for relatively minor offenses. An offender who receives probation for a single sale of drugs can face a lifetime of disenfranchisement, says Human Rights Watch.

"No other democratic country in the world denies as many people - in absolute or proportional terms - the right to vote because of felony convictions," the report argues. Restrictions on the
franchise in the United States "seem to be singularly unreasonable as well as racially discriminatory, in violation of democratic principles and international human rights law," the report adds.

Human Rights Watch and co-authors of the report - Sentencing Project - estimate that 3.9 million Americans, or one in 50 adults, have currently or permanently lost the ability to vote because of
a felony conviction. Some 1.4 million persons, disenfranchised for felony convictions, are ex-offenders who have completed their criminal sentence.

Another 1.4 million of the disenfranchised are African American men, or 13 percent of the black adult male population - a rate of disenfranchisement that is seven times the national average. More
than one-third (36 percent) of the total disenfranchised population are black men.

Ten states disenfranchise more than one in five adult black men; in seven of these states, one in four black men is permanently disenfranchised.

The report estimates that at present rates of incarceration, three in ten of the next generation of black men will lose their voting rights at some point in their lifetime. In states with the most
restrictive voting laws, 40 percent of African American men are likely to be permanently disenfranchised.

"Our democracy is weakened when one sector of the population is blocked out of the voting process," argued Representative John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The authors attribute some of the disproportionate rate of black imprisonment and disenfranchisement on harsh drug sentencing policies in the national "war on drugs". Under such policies, the report says, arrest rates per 100,000 people on drug charges are six times higher for blacks than for whites.

Although African Americans are estimated by the Department of Justice to comprise some 13 to 15 percent of all drug users, they account for 36 percent of all arrests for drug possession.

According to the report, ex-offenders in 14 states who have fully served their sentences never regain the right to vote.  Ten of these states disenfranchise ex-felons for life: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming.

Arizona and Maryland permanently remove voting rights from those convicted of a second felony; and Tennessee and Washington disenfranchise permanently those convicted prior to l986 and 1984, respectively. In Texas, a convicted felon's right to vote is not restored until two years after discharge from prison, probation or parole.

The report gives examples of former felons who were convicted of minor crimes yet permanently lost the right to vote. Abran Ramirez was denied the ability to vote for life in California because of a
20-year-old robbery conviction, even though had served only three months in jail and had successfully completed ten years of parole.

Another former felon cited by the report was disenfranchised for life in Mississippi because he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour of issuing a bad cheque for 150 U.S. dollars.

In theory, the authors note, ex-offenders can regain the right to vote. In practice, they point out, this possibility is usually illusory. In eight states, a pardon or order from the governor is required; in two states, the ex-felon must obtain action by the parole or pardons board.

In Virginia, for example, there are 200,000 ex-convicts, only 404 of whom have had their vote restored in the past two years. In Florida, an ex-felon must wait ten years after completion of his or
her sentence before being eligible to seek the gubernatorial pardon needed to restore voting rights.

In conclusion, the authors of the report argue that, disenfranchisement "is a political anachronism reflecting values incompatible with modern democratic principles...arbitrarily denying convicted offenders the ability to vote regardless of the nature of their crimes or the severity of their sentences."

Congress should enact legislation to restore voting rights in federal elections so that those rights will not be restricted by varying state laws, the report contends. State legislatures similarly should eliminate state laws that curtail the franchise for persons with felony convictions within their states, the report says.