During a speech at Georgetown University Law Center, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urged states to restore voting rights of felons after their release from prison. Holder said, “It is time to fundamentally reconsider laws that permanently disenfranchise people who are no longer under federal or state supervision.”
According to Adam Goldman of The Washington Post, voting rights activists are trying to push forward an amendment that would make it easier for “returning citizens” to vote in Florida. The push could become a campaign issue in Florida’s gubernatorial election this year.
Holder said that 10 percent of Florida’s population is disenfranchised. “The laws deserve not only to be reconsidered, but repealed,” Holder said. In addition to Florida, there are 10 other states that restrict voting rights for felons, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Characterizing felony disenfranchisement as “unwise”, “unjust,” and “not keeping with our democratic values,” Attorney General Holder shined a light in another dark corner in the nation’s room by reminding the public that, “Although well over a century has past since post-reconstruction, states used these measures to strip African-Americans of their most fundamental rights. The impact of felony disenfranchisement on modern communities of color remains both disproportionate and unacceptable.”
California is currently facing its own disenfranchisement crisis among felons. In February, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area filed a lawsuit against the state for “unconstitutionally stripping tens of thousands of people of their right to vote,” according to an ACLU press release.
Michael Richer, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California said, “The Secretary of State should be working to increase voter participation, not undermine it.” Additionally, Richer noted that the Secretary of State is worsening California’s existing issue of low rates of voter participation by revoking voting rights of those trying to integrate back into society, claiming that “California needs more protection – not less – for voting rights.”
Dorsey Nunn, executive director of All of Us or None, one of the plaintiff organizations in the lawsuit said, “Society is more secure when all people feel they are fully part of it. If we want formerly incarcerated Californians to be good citizens, we need to convince them that they are part of society too. I have never met a graffiti artist who spray paints his own home or business.”
Trudy Shafer, a director at the League of Women Voters, another organizational plaintiff, said allowing released felons to vote might actually help keep them from reoffending. In fact, recent studies suggest that there is a correlation between voting and reduced risk of recidivism.
“There are already a lot of hurdles that you face if you are reentering the community, and being integrated into the community is a way of making it easier to get over those hurdles,” Schafer said. “There’s nothing better than having a say in what your community life is going to be like by voting.”