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Locking Up the Vote



By Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair

May, 2003

The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964)

An eighteen-year-old first-time offender who trades a guilty plea for a nonprison sentence may unwittingly sacrifice forever his right to vote.

Andrew Shapiro, attorney

Fueled by the war on drugs, the United States convicts more people of crimes than any other country in the world. We have 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. Our rate of imprisonment is five times higher than it was in 1972, the year before the Nixon administration created the DEA. In addition to losing years of their lives, offenders may lose the right to vote, to serve on a jury, or to hold public office long after their sentence has been served. Even those who do not serve time in prison are affected. An offender who receives probation for a single sale of drugs can face a lifetime of disenfranchisement.

No other democratic country in the world denies as many people (in absolute or proportional terms) the right to vote. An estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens are disenfranchised, including over one million who have fully completed their sentences. Florida and Texas each disenfranchise more than 600,000 people. Of the disenfranchised, 73% are not in prison, but are on probation or parole or have completed their sentences. One million were sentenced only to probation, not to prison. Texas disenfranchises nearly a quarter of a million people (234,200) on probation. In Texas, a convicted felon’s right to vote is restored after discharge from prison, probation or parole. If incarceration rates remain unchanged, one in twenty of today’s children will serve time in a prison during his or her lifetime and will be disenfranchised for at least the period of incarceration.

While drug use and sales take place in all socio-economic and racial groups, drug law enforcement occurs primarily in poor communities of color. (See March VOTER, “Race and the Drug War.”) As a result, 1.4 million black men or 13% of the black male adult population are disenfranchised, seven times the national average. In Alabama and Florida, 31% of all black men are permanently disenfranchised. In Texas, one in five black men (20.8%) is currently disenfranchised.

Disenfranchisement laws distort the country’s electoral process. Not only are prisoners unable to vote, they are counted by the national census as residents of the towns in they which they are imprisoned, leaving their hometowns (often urban communities of color) with diminished political representation and government funding. Disenfranchisement makes political outcasts of ex-offenders who are law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.

The Sentencing Project has made the following recommendations. Any legislation that denies the right to vote should a) identify the state interests served by disenfranchisement; b) specify the crimes for which disenfranchisement is a reasonable and proportionate response; and c) require that disenfranchisement apply only when imposed by a judge as part of a criminal sentence.

Source: The Sentencing Project, "Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States." www.sentencingproject.org/pubs/hrwfvr.html

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