Disenfranchised Voters - 6 Million Voices Silenced

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The Argument for Disqualification

Most obstructions of the right to vote in America have disappeared since the Voting Rights act of 1965, apart from disqualification for a felony conviction. There are many in society that believe a person convicted of a felony possesses morals and values differ from those that have not committed a crime. As stated by Miller, E.J. (2006) in Foundering Democracy, “Under the republican justification of disenfranchisement, the felons’ and former felons’ criminal character places them in a subordinate status for purposes of voting. They are anti-social contagions that pollute the electoral process and should be excluded” (para.12). In other words, felons are the type of people that would not take the common good of all citizens into consideration when voting, because they did not do so in their commitment of a crime against the rules of society. Failure to acknowledge the relevant differences in ideologies between conservative groups of Americans and progressives would be a disservice to all. To this argument of following laws, we look to the civil rights era for guidance. Martin Luther King Jr (1965) in his famous letter from a Birmingham jail over 50 years ago, addresses certain laws, in which he quotes St. Augustine “An unjust law is no law at all” (p.2). Furthermore, there are no set stipulations on what type of felony disqualifies a person from the right to vote. Do we then apply blanket punishment to all convicted? Should a person who steals an apple because they are hungry be subject to the same punish that a murder receives? If we are to use disenfranchisement as a form of punishment for crime it should be uniform from state to state and reserved for serious infractions only.

Efforts to Restore Ex-Felon Voter Rights

Many disenfranchised voters in 2016 have completed their sentences and are now productive citizens working and living in society. Part of being a productive member of society is participation in the electoral process. Not having input on where and how tax dollars are spent was one of the reasons behind the formation of this nation. Many US citizens can recall their grade school teachers speaking of The Boston Tea Party being about “Taxation without representation”, many early patriots felt this was unfair in 1773. How then do we justify 243 years of no representation for ex-felons? The Sentencing Project publication Uggen, Larson, and Shannon (2016) write that “States typically provide some limited mechanism for disenfranchised persons to restore their right to vote. These vary greatly in scope, eligibility requirements, and reporting practices,” (para.12). Delaware lifted its 5-year waiting period for some offenses, while Iowa has gone from disenfranchisement to reinstatement depending on the political party the governor belongs too. Despite renewed efforts by many states to restore voters’ rights to some, the number of citizens disenfranchised continue to grow. The increased amount of those disenfranchise can be directly tied to The War on Drugs which has increased the prison population of the United States to the largest in the World. Per Alexander (2012) an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, in her book The New Jim Crow, “In less than thirty years, the US penal population exploded from around 300,00 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase” (p.6). The obvious solution to restore the voting rights of all citizens would be an expansion of the Voters Right Act to include all citizens of the U.S without exception.

Exclusion or Inclusion the Impact on All Citizens

Our great nation has just been through one of the most controversial and divisive elections of its history. We are currently engulfed in a political atmosphere in which politicians and news media outlets spend more time on 2-minute sound bites and talking snippets than the real issues facing everyday citizens. The ideas of freedom, democracy, and equality that this nation was founded upon must once again be distributed equally between the fortunate and those less fortunate. Kalt (2003) asserts that “African Americans are disproportionately represented at a rate four times that of their Caucasian counterparts, partially due to increased policing in urban neighborhoods “(p.65). The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, felony disenfranchisement dishonors our nation. In a government founded on the principle For the People by The People having less than half of those people vote is not living up to that creed. Every voice need be heard or inequality and strife will be the law of the land. We must decide if our children deserve to grow up in a land where one is forgiven for their past indiscretions, or one where a mistake makes you an outcast of society. Our nation is one built on the Christian morals and values the bible states: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:14, New International Version). Let us not be the parent who bars their children from speaking to their siblings for the rest of their lives for a minor infraction.6 million citizens entreat you to be a nation of second chances, allow all voices to be heard.

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References

Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow, Mass incarnation in the age of colorblindness. New

York, NY: The New Press

Berry, M.F., Keith D., Derfner, A., Hamilton.V.C., Arrington, K.M., Guinier, L., Wolfley,

J., Edds, M. Raby, A., Der, H., Lake, C., & Kusnet, D. (1992). Voting rights in America,

Continuing the Quest for full participation. Washington, D.C. HarperCollins Publishers

Brooks, G. (2004). Felony disenfranchisement: Law, history, policy, and politics.

Fordham Urban Law Journal, volume 32, issue 5 ,2004 Article 3. Retrieved from

Kalt, B. (2003). The exclusion of felons from jury service. American University Law Review

53,65

King, M. L. (1963). The Negro Is Your Brother; Letter from a Birmingham Jail. The Atlantic

Monthly; August 1963, 212(2), 78-88. doi:10.4324/9781315838311

Miller,