Former Felons May Regain Right to Vote in Countrys Strictest States

Cross-Posted at Project Vote's Voting Matter's Blog

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

by Erin Ferns

Hundreds of thousands of former felons may regain their voting rights in two of the country's most restrictive states this year. As predicted last month, disenfranchisement reform is an election issue that is quietly gaining momentum as policymakers in Virginia and Kentucky battle for restoration of voting rights.
The two states are currently the only states in the nation that permanently disenfranchise all felony offenders. Virginia, however, has permitted certain former felons to apply for restoration, which then has to be approved by the governor, according to the Virginian Pilot last week. With less than 10,000 Virginians having regained voting rights under the last four governorships and at least 297,901 still disenfranchised, it appears more has to be done. But it appears this will not be accomplished without a fight.

Last week, the Virginia Senate passed one measure and defeated another that would restore voting rights, the Pilot reported. Constitutional amendment SJ 273, a measure that would give the General Assembly "constitutional power to restore voting rights to non-violent felons," is now in the House. However, an arguably more effective measure "that would automatically restore voting rights once a felon completes their sentence and subsequent parole or probation" died on a 19-19 vote. "Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who presides in the Senate, broke the tie and voted against it."

Nationally, more than five million people are not allowed to vote as a result of a past felony conviction. Policies on felony re-enfranchisement among the 50 states are so inconsistent as to create confusion among, not only those former offenders who wish to regain the right to vote, but also the very officials charged with implementing the laws. Fair and consistent felony re-enfranchisement laws can contribute to the rehabilitation process, and reduce the harmful impact on low-income and minority communities where a disproportionately high number of individuals are disenfranchised due to felony convictions. With that, voting rights advocates are pushing for automatic post-incarceration restoration of voting rights, as we reported in last month's blog entry.

Under a system of automatic post-incarceration restoration of rights, "citizens released from prison would be immediately eligible to vote while on probation and parole, as are those who are sentenced to probation without serving any time in prison," according to a 2008 report by Erika Wood of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. "These citizens would be permitted to register in precisely the same way as other eligible citizens, without submission of special paperwork."

"Restoring the right to vote to ex-offenders is an integral aspect of reintegration into society," according to a 2007 Project Vote report, which notes a disproportionate over-representation of low-income and minority citizens in the criminal justice system. "Consistent policies are necessary to prevent large-scale disenfranchisement not only of the ex-offenders themselves, but also of the communities to which they belong. Society as a whole benefits when a representative government truly represents all its citizens."

While the Virginia bill has support from both parties, it "must travel a difficult path to become law," the Pilot reports. "The first step is being approved by the Republican-controlled House of Delegates that has already killed similar proposals this year."

Another fight is expected in Kentucky, where as many as 186,000 former felons may be able to vote again if House Bill 70 "gets the support it needs from lawmakers," according to local broadcast news outlet, WHAS 11. The bill would amend state law that permanently disenfranchises all felony offenders to restore voting rights after completion of sentence. The bill is now in the Senate.

To monitor the progress of Virginia and Kentucky's felon voting rights bills, visit www.ElectionLegislation.org and sign up for the Election Legislation e-Digest by emailing a subscription request to eferns(at)projectvote.org.

Quick Links:

Statistics by State. Sentencing Project.

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The Great Derangement: A Late-Night Thank You to Our (Vaguely Frightening) Hate Stalkers

I've recently become aware that I have a few blog stalkers - ie. people who spend inordinate amounts of time blogging about how much they hate my writing (see here, here, here, here and here for just a few recent examples). Evidently, these people have oodles of time on their hands (and personally, I think the funniest of them are those who still insist Hillary Clinton never supported NAFTA, despite Clinton's own repeated public speeches promoting NAFTA). But I just want to give them a shout out - I sincerely love them all, both because they are providing a few extra links to OpenLeft, and because at a level far deeper than meta-narrative navel gazing, they reflect the broader societal anger that I think could make this the transformative historical moment we all want it to be.
On the link score - hey, the more traffic, the better. It's kinda like that exchange from the movie "Private Parts" about Howard Stern. After the station manager says "the average Howard Stern fan listens for an hour and 10 minutes" he then indignantly recounts that "the average Stern hater listens for 2 and a half hours a day." I don't aim to be Howard Stern, but the principle from that exchange is right-on. We'll take the traffic from the stalkers - traffic is traffic, after all, and readers are readers (and check it out - OpenLeft's traffic has been awesome of late).

But beyond just the self-interest of having blog stalkers inadvertently help us with traffic, I want to reiterate that I think the frenzied rage that's out there - whether directed at me, OpenLeft, or at any other progressive institution - is to be expected in times like this.

The country is coming apart, we're handing over $8 or $9 trillion to Wall Street, the government - as I and many others repeatedly warned - is being stacked with those who engineered this crisis, and people are violently angry. And so some of the angriest are desperate for scapegoats and conspiracy theories to help them make sense of it all. My good buddy Matt Taibbi documented this pretty well in his last book - the fringe left (from the LaRouchies to the "everyone is awful" Naderites to the Obama-hating Clintonites) and the fringe right (from the anti-immigrant lunatics to the militia sympathizers to the libertarian ideologues) find common cause in turning their righteous frustration at the Establishment into chest-thumping anger at phantom demons that seem more easy to slay than the massive institutions and powers that have destroyed the country.

And so if I or OpenLeft or any other good progressive institution/voice serves as one of those proxies that seems more easy and fun and tangible to scapegoat than giant concepts like The Government or The Establishment or The System or towering cultural icons like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush, then, at a certain level, that's really OK with me. And I don't say that in any kind of martyr-like, please-fee-bad-for-me kind of way - I mean it sincerely.

If, for instance, the fringe left needs to blame me for Hillary Clinton losing to Barack Obama; or Hillary Clinton stupidly campaigning for NAFTA and the Iraq War; or Ralph Nader not being able to mount a real presidential campaign in a money-dominated system; or Barack Obama not fulfilling his campaign promises; that's fine by me. I can take it, even if I don't agree with it, even if I can acknowledge (like most rational human beings) that such a line of thinking is crazy, insane and absurd.

I can take it because it is entirely predictable in what Taibbi calls "The Great Derangement" - that is, in a country whose political system has made people feel so desperately powerless that they need delusional theories to make them feel they have some shred of control over the nation's destiny. If me serving as a punching bag helps make people feel they have some shred of control or vested interest in political engagement, then that's ultimately a good thing. Indeed, in Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky says that anyone truly committed to organizing and activism and political empowerment needs - at times - to be willing to serve as such a punching bag for precisely this reason.

The anger that's welling up across the country is real and it needs to be channeled somewhere, and if some of it is being channeled here at us, that's ultimately a positive. Why? Because for every one of the stalkers who has gone completely off the deep end - for every sociopath who spends oodles of time writing whacked-out Unabomber-like manifestos blaming me, or another individual writer, or a blog or or the progressive movement for the end of civilization in a country where individual progressive writers and blogs and movements are still incredibly outgunned by the monied Establishment - my guess is that there are 10 people just as angry but far more sane who can be brought into the fold to channel their anger into the kinds of constructive causes and movements that I have devoted my career to, that this community at OpenLeft is all about and that will ultimately bring lasting change to America.

UPDATE: Within moments of this diary posting, one of my most devout stalkers requested that I link to an extra one of his/her stalker posts. The timing, of course, reiterates the stalky-ness of it all. But in the interest of obliging, here's that link calling me a blind Obama loyalist. I'm guessing you'll find it pretty funny, if you've read any of my work.

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