It’s Time to Strengthen Our Democracy and Restore the Right to Vote

Too many in our nation have had their voting rights eliminated because of past mistakes. We need to fix that.

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Last week, a Texas woman was arrested for voting in the 2016 presidential election. It wasn’t because of a vanishingly rare type of illegal voting that President Trump claims cost him the popular vote; it was because Texas prohibits formerly incarcerated people from voting if they’ve returned to their communities but are still serving probation, parole, or supervised release.

That arrest has shone a spotlight on the confusing, inconsistent, and unfair patchwork of laws throughout the United States — laws that allow citizens of some states to vote when they return home from prison while suppressing the vote of others, sometimes for life.

These felony disenfranchisement laws are rooted in the post-Civil War era and were originally used to prevent newly freed slaves from voting. Today, these laws still have a profound racial impact. About one of every 13 African Americans in the United States is denied the right to vote by criminal disenfranchisement laws — a rate that is more than four times the rate for those who aren’t African American. In four states — Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia — more than a fifth of the state’s African-American residents are disenfranchised. Maine and Vermont are the only two states that place no restrictions on voting — including for people serving their sentences.

And consider these facts:

Our country leaves the decision of who can vote in elections to be legislated by individual states, and that’s where progress to restore voting rights is currently taking place.

Organizers in Florida, for example, have been working for years to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot to overturn the state’s draconian law, and in January 2018 they collected enough signatures — more than a quarter million — to make it happen. This November, Florida voters will have an opportunity to restore the right to vote to an estimated 1.5 million people by voting yes on Florida Amendment 4.

In New Jersey, state lawmakers introduced a bill in February 2018 that would allow anyone to vote — both while they’re in prison and after release. If it’s enacted into law, New Jersey will join Maine and Vermont in not restricting voting rights based on felony convictions.

There’s also federal legislation that could help restore voting rights in federal elections to formerly incarcerated people who are living and working in our communities. The Democracy Restoration Act, first introduced a decade ago, would ensure Americans have access to the electoral process. Sen. Ben Cardin, D. Md., reintroduced the bill in July 2017, but there haven’t yet been any hearings to consider it.

In this country, voting is a national symbol of equality and full citizenship. Eliminating the voting rights of our citizens — rights for which many have given their lives — is against the very basic principles upon which our country was founded. Democracy is strengthened when as many citizens as possible have the right to vote.

And there’s no rational reason to take away someone’s voting rights for life just because they’ve committed a crime, especially after they’ve served their time for the mistakes they made in the past. In fact, research has demonstrated that restoring the vote is associated with lower rates of re-arrest for people who were formerly incarcerated. Giving people a voice in their community is not just about second chances; it’s about building a community that’s safer for everyone.

The time to restore the right to vote is now.


This post is the first in a series of four stories published in commemoration of Second Chance Month. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a Second Chance Month partner and believes that together we can unlock brighter futures for the 65 million people in America who have repaid their debt to society.

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