Felons & the Right to Vote
By: Kaelyn Dunnell
Tags: Voting, Criminal Justice, Informative

This topic is highly contested outside and even inside the Democratic Party. Before I get into what arguments cause this contention, let me explain what felons and voting rights look like today.

I’ll be honest — on the surface, it looks messy. This is for one primary reason: the right to vote for felons and ex-felons is a state-level issue. So, every state has its own set of laws or policies regarding the matter. They vary on when felons can recover their right to vote (for example, after incarceration versus after parole) and which felons can recover their right to vote (all, some, or none at all). Today, states are divided into six categories:

1) Some felons can recover their right to vote after conviction.

2) All felons can recover their right to vote after serving their sentence (including probation, prison, and parole).

3) All felons can recover their right to vote after parole.

4) All felons can recover their right to vote after incarceration.

5) All felons always retain their right to vote (even during incarceration).

The slim majority of states adhere to number 5. Check out this handy document for a more detailed list of the policies in each state.

So, now the question is, why does this matter?

Increasingly over the past few years, criminal justice reform advocates have been calling for the restoration of voting rights for all felons. Now, they’ve varied in how exactly they want to do that. In this year’s Democratic primary, for example, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VA) supported the right to vote for all felons at all times, even during incarceration, while more moderate candidates supported the restoration of voting rights after served sentences.

Let’s take a look at some common arguments behind restoring voting rights for felons in general, without any specificity as to when these rights will be restored.

First, keeping felons from their right to vote further enforces the racist disparities in the justice system and promotes racial injustice and disenfranchisement.

The felon disenfranchisement laws in this country are notorious for stripping ex-felons of their most fundamental rights and abilities (side note: I highly recommend the Netflix mini-series When They See Us by Ava Duvernay, which goes in fantastic depth about felon disenfranchisement). This disenfranchisement was actually born in post-Reconstruction attempts to keep African-Americans under bondage. In 2014, 2.2 million African-American citizens lost their right to vote due to conviction — 1 out of 13 African-Americans in the US.

In states like Florida, felony disenfranchisement laws are literally rewritten Black Codes — the racist Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against African-Americans and reinforced their subordinate status to the white man. Fortunately, Florida changed many of its laws in 2018 after the Midterms, but the effects still run deep.

Second, voting rights are basic civil rights that all people, regardless of what they’ve done, should retain.

This argument finds home in the Social Contract theory and hopes for the promotion of better ideals for reforming felons. In the Social Contract theory (which the United States adheres to), felons are still privy to upholding their end of the “bargain” with the government — that is, following the law or serving time for breaking it. In exchange for that release of freedom, each and every person retains the right to determine who runs that government and delegates that freedom. Taking this right away from felons unjustly makes them hold up on the end of a bargain inherently slanted against them.

Furthermore, enabling felons to vote (even while in prison) would perhaps strengthen their ties to civilian government and the ideals that they are reforming to embody.

Third, the restriction of voting rights for felons is motivated only by political affiliation.

The primary supporters of voting rights restrictions for felons are Republicans. This is for one reason and one reason only: felons and ex-felons typically vote blue. Republicans have even openly admitted that their sole reason for pushing voting rights restrictions is not founded in “voter fraud” as the GOP claims, but simply political gain. Estimates show that, for example, if ex-felons in Florida had been able to vote, Democrats would have gained a net of 48,000 votes over their Republican counterparts.

So, with the understanding that felons should have the right to vote, two questions remain: When should felons retain the right to vote? and Does Congress have the federal authority to impose a solution?

We’ll find out soon enough.