Salt of the Earth: A felonious assault on voting rights

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February 2001

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A felonious assault on voting rights
Bill Clinton saved the relaxing and retiring for after the end of his official term; he used his last days as president to sign executive orders, grant pardons, and push legislation he wouldn't get the chance to pass, including the restoration of felon voting rights.

"I think it is time that we change, as a matter of national policy, the idea that you have to have a presidential pardon or a governor's pardon before you can get your vote back," Clinton told a gathering of the U.S. Conference of Mayors the week before he left office.

"I think if you pay a price, you go to jail, you get out, then you're on probation for a while, then your sentence is discharged—why shouldn't you get your vote back?" he asked the group.

An estimated 3.9 million Americans are currently unable to vote because of felony convictions, according to a 1998 report by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project. That translates to one in 50 adults. More than 1.4 million of the disenfranchised have completed their sentences. Thirteen percent of all African American men are disenfranchised—seven times the national average.

Statistics from The Sentencing Project

48 states and the District of Columbia prohibit inmates from voting while they are incarcerated for a felony offense.

Maine and Vermont are the only two states that allow inmates to vote.

32 states prohibit felons from voting while on parole; 29 of these states also exclude those on probation.

Nine states deny the right to vote to all ex-offenders who have completed their sentences; five others disenfranchise some.

3.9 million Americans have currently or permanently lost their voting rights because of a felony conviction.

1.4 million African American men, or 13 percent, cannot vote because of felony convictions.

More than 2 million white Americans cannot vote.

More than half a million women have lost their right to vote.

In seven states that deny the vote to ex-offenders, 25 percent of African American men are permanently disenfranchised.

In most states an ex-offender must acquire a gubernatorial or presidential pardon to vote again, and each state has its own process for obtaining one. In his last weeks in office Clinton sorted through hundreds of clemency requests, finally granting 140. (Some proved controversial.) Many of those requests were from felons who wanted their voting rights restored, the former president said.

At a January 15 press meeting Clinton said he hoped the new Congress would pass a bill to remedy the situation. "I regret that we couldn't pass the legislation this year, but I think that there's a lot of bipartisan interest in it, especially among people who have thought about it and have personal contacts," he said.

In March of 1999 Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced the Civic Participation and Rehabilitation Act of 1999. The bill called for the reinstatement of federal voting rights for offenders who have been released from incarceration, even if they cannot vote in state elections.

The Subcommittee on the Constitution heard testimony on the act several months later. "It was a fruitful hearing, but no vote was taken," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project.

Mauer, who spoke before the Subcommittee, said Conyers will introduce a nearly identical bill early this year.

"It's hard to know how it will do now," Mauer said. "It will get a lot more attention because of the focus on electoral laws, but it's still going to be an uphill battle. We're looking for bipartisan support."

The presidential election debacle in Florida has focused renewed scrutiny on felony disenfranchisement laws. More than 400,000 Florida citizens could not go to the polls because of felony convictions in their pasts, The Sentencing Project reported. Over 31 percent, or nearly a third, of African American men in the state couldn't vote.

Clinton highlighted the problems in Florida when he spoke to the mayors. "One of the big controversies in the recent election in Florida was the review of people to see if they had criminal records, which disabled them from voting," he said. "And then you had a lot of other people agitated because they were apparently—maybe not intentionally, just accidentally—purged from the rolls, because they had the same names or similar names as the people who did."

President Bush has not announced a position on the issue.—Anne Graber

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