When Justin Allen tried to register to vote for the first time in 2017, he was turned away.
That’s because Allen is one of the millions of Americans who has been convicted of a felony. When — or even if — their right to vote is restored is dictated by a patchwork system that varies wildly state to state, confusing both local election officials and would-be voters.
It took Allen three trips to his local clerk’s office to get on the rolls, despite a letter from his sentencing judge saying he was eligible. Now he is part of a wave of activists pushing for new state laws that would more quickly and uniformly restore the voting rights of those convicted of felonies, a movement that has found significant success in recent years.
“When I got my voting rights restored, I cried,” Allen, who is now a voting rights advocate with the liberal group America Votes, said. “It meant that I was a citizen.”
Despite state victories, federal action has been elusive. And after a January stumble in Washington, 2022 will determine whether the movement still has momentum as it faces key tests in New Mexico, Allen’s home state, in Virginia — the hottest political battleground of 2021 — and elsewhere.
How successful the reenfranchisement movement is could have a major effect on the makeup of the electorate in the midterms and beyond. A2020 report from The Sentencing Project, which supports reenfranchisement, found that 5.2 million Americans were barred from voting due to a felony conviction, accounting for one out of every 44 adults. The numbers are even higher among Black Americans, accounting for one in every 16 adults — a vestige, activists say, of the Jim Crow roots of the laws.
Activists' hopes for a sweeping federal restoration of rights were dashed when Democrats’ voting rights megabill went down in the Senate in January. The bill would have been revolutionary for those convicted of felonies because it would have presented one national standard: A person’s right to vote, under that legislation, could not be “denied or abridged because that individual has been convicted of a criminal offense unless such individual is serving a felony sentence in a correctional institution or facility at the time of the election.”
Outside of D.C., success has been found more readily in state capitals. In 21 states, people convicted of felonies automatically regain the right to vote upon their release from incarceration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
That number has steadily ticked up in recent years, including after victories last year in Washington state, Connecticut and New York.
“We’re in the middle of a movement on this issue,” said Henal Patel, the director of the democracy and justice program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which helped lead the successful 2020 push for reenfranchisement of people no longer incarcerated. “We are in a wildly different place than where we were in 2005, even 2010.”
The number of states automatically restoring voting rights has increased by 50 percent since after the 2018 election, with seven states passing laws or ballot initiatives that automatically restored a person’s rights once they were released, according to the NCSL.
Two states — Maine and Vermont — don’t strip anyone of the right to vote after conviction, even while incarcerated, and the District of Columbia joined them in 2020. An additional 16 states automatically restore voting rights after incarceration and a period of time afterward, typically parole or probation.
Some activists attribute the dramatic increase in states restoring voting rights to a victory in 2018 in Florida, where a measure to automatically restore voting rights to those convicted of a felony was overwhelmingly passed by voters, although a successful push from Republicans to make it contingent upon paying court debts and other fines tempered that victory there.
“The 2018 ballot measure really created a groundswell of attention not just in Florida, but nationally,” said Nicole D. Porter, who manages state and local advocacy drives at The Sentencing Project. “So many democracy advocates were drawn to the ballot measure in Florida … a lot of them continue to stay engaged in the issue” across the country.
And activists say they celebrated another significant milestone in 2020, the first year that no state categorically prevented all people convicted of felonies from regaining their right to vote — in practice, but not in statute. That year, Iowa GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds issued an expansive executive order, following executive action in states like Virginia and Kentucky.
“The spectrum used to go from permanent disenfranchisement for everybody convicted of a felony, to Maine and Vermont,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, the liberal-leaning civil rights group that advocates for reenfranchisement. “Now the spectrum goes from some states that permanently disenfranchise people convinced of certain felonies or in certain circumstances.”
But opposition to the automatic restoration of rights for people convicted of felonies is still prevalent among some conservatives — with those opposed arguing that fulfilling terms of parole and probation, repaying restitution or an otherwise general waiting period is still necessary.
“I think for a lot of folks on the right, the discussion about felon voting restoration is probably a bit more nuanced than sometimes portrayed,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project.
“I’m sure there are people who would happily lock people up and throw away the key, right?” he continued. “But for the most part, I think the main question is should there be a mechanism in place by which felons have to earn their voting rights back [and] demonstrate a period where they’re not going to commit another crime?”
And some opponents say those convicted of certain crimes — often violent or sexual in nature — should not have their rights restored. In a letter approving the law limiting the Florida constitutional amendment, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized it for restoring rights to some convicted of violent crimes “without regard to the wishes of the victims.”
Executive action on the restoration of voting rights has historically been tenuous and unstable. Reynolds’ executive order was the second time voting rights were restored in Iowa; former Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack signed an order doing so in 2005, but his successor, former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, rescinded it in 2011.
That unstable history will be on display in Virginia in 2022, where voting right restoration is not automatic. Successive governors — starting with then-Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, and ramping up dramatically under former Democratic Govs. Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam — took new steps to streamline the process to restore the voting rights of people convicted of felonies, with hundreds of thousands regaining that right.
Mindful of the chance for retrenchment under a different administration, activists in the state pushed the legislature for a constitutional amendment to make restoring voting rights automatic and permanent. It passed both chambers with overwhelming Democratic and a small amount of Republican support in 2021, but it must pass a second time this year before it could go in front of Virginia voters.
It could be the biggest fight for restoration advocates this year. Republicans now have a narrow majority in the state House after riding the coattails of now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory last year, when he flipped the state red. Its future in the lower chamber remains murky — and can only be saved by a bipartisan coalition. One Republican has prominently taken up the cause: first-term state Del. Mike Cherry, who introduced the amendment this year.
“I just have this idea that redemption is part of the process for all of our lives,” Cherry, a pastor who was first elected to the state Legislature last year, said in an interview. He called the growing support among some on reenfranchisement efforts an “evolving point of view for many conservatives” and that he was hopeful it would be able to pull more support.
“I think more and more people are warming to the idea that this can be an issue that we should all be able to get behind. Because it's not a left or right issue,” he said.
Youngkin has not made his position on the amendment — or on broader restoration — clear. The amendment does not need the governor's support to go before the voters, it only needs to pass out of the chamber. Youngkin’s office did not respond to a series of questions on his views on the constitutional amendment, or restoration more broadly.
During debate over the constitutional amendment last year, some Republicans in Virginia objected to the proposed amendment for a litany of reasons, including rights being restored before restitution was paid off, and for those convicted of certain crimes — namely violent or sexual crimes — being included.
During an elections committee hearing in January, Kay Coles James, Youngkin’s secretary of the commonwealth, demurred when asked about the amendment.
“Every single request that comes into that office will be given great consideration,” James, the former head of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said when asked about the restoration process. “This particular governor is a governor that believes in second chances.”
New Mexico will also be another major test for the restoration movement. In the state, those convicted of felonies have to finish parole or probation before they can register to vote. A bill that would make voting rights restoration automatic immediately upon the release from incarceration passed the state House last year, but died in the state Senate.
This year, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has included the restoration of voting rights upon release as part of what she has dubbed a state Voting Rights Act, introduced in part in response to the failure of federal legislation. Advocates are pushing hard for the bill during the state’s short session, with Democratic chamber leaders both signing on as sponsors.
And activists say they are also eyeing longer-term pushes in states like Kentucky, Alabama and Mississippi, hoping to attract more Republican support. While Democratic lawmakers have recently formed the foundation for votes for the reenfranchisement of people with felony convictions, there is some noticeable cross-partisan support for it as well.
Chapters of Americans for Prosperity — the libertarian-leaning organization at the heart of the Koch constellation of conservative groups — have backed drives in states like New Mexico and Virginia. And in Kentucky, some Republican lawmakers have backed pushes for the eventual restoration of voting and other rights in the state.
Beyond that, some are pushing for more states to join Vermont and Maine in allowing those incarcerated to vote. “This year, there are introduced measures in Oregon and Illinois,” Porter said. “This is the second year that there’s a serious conversation to move that forward.”
But the disparate laws across states — and the ever-changing legal landscape — means that activists say their work isn’t close to done.
A lack of a federal standard creates confusion and wariness, even in states with re-enfranchisement efforts that have been successful. The case of Crystal Mason — a Texas woman who is facing a five-year prison sentence for trying to vote while she was ineligible, even though her vote ultimately was not counted and she maintains she thought she could vote — was repeatedly cited in interviews.
It was a prime example, they say, of the challenges those with felony convictions have navigating the system. And in addition to the severe sentence Mason is facing individually, it created a broader chilling effect, where those who have had their rights restored in other states shying away from the ballot box because of personal uncertainty about their status.
“It's not only state to state, but in particular states over time — either with a change of law or a change from a governor’s executive order, that makes the cost of entry that much higher,” said Julie Ebenstein, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU who has litigated rights restoration cases.
“People have a tough time finding out when they have their rights restored, and then having confidence in their determination,” she said.
Even with the uneven legal landscape, reformers say the efforts are crucial to help reintegrate those who were formerly incarcerated into the community.
Washington state Rep. Tarra Simmons, a Democrat who helped lead the charge in her state last year for automatic restoration after release, said she stressed how restoration helped reduce recidivism “by giving people something back.”
For Simmons, it was personal. She herself served time in prisons and says she is the first formerly incarcerated person to serve in her state’s Legislature after she won office in 2020. Washington’s new law went into effect at the beginning of this year.
“It really is about valuing human dignity after a person has paid their debt to society and welcoming them home,” she said.
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By: Zach Montellaro
Title: Felon voting rights failed in Washington — but not in the states
Sourced From: www.politico.com/news/2022/02/02/felon-voting-rights-states-00004372
Published Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2022 04:30:00 EST
