Attorney General Eric Holder this week called on states to do away with arcane laws that prohibit more than 6 million felons, most of whom are people of color, from voting in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center.
“Those swept up in this system too often had their rights rescinded, their dignity diminished, and the full measure of their citizenship revoked for the rest of their lives,” Holder said in the speech. “They could not vote.”
Currently, four states disenfranchise for life those convicted of felonies, and seven states permanently disenfranchise those with at least some kind of criminal convictions. Only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow those convicted of crimes to vote without restrictions.
Holder characterized these state policies as the remnants of the racist Jim Crow system in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, in which states enacted laws to control and oppress people of color and keep them from voting.
“It is important to remember that these laws disenfranchising people with criminal convictions have some of their roots in some of our country’s most shameful past and serve to prevent communities of color from translating their numbers into a free and fair and accurate percentage of the voting population,” said Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It is an important recognition of the fact that goals of reintegration are not furthered by having people who cannot participate in our body politic.”
According to a 2009 Brennan Center study, the restoration of voting rights to felons would not only contribute to a more robust democracy and the advancement of civil rights, but also would aid law enforcement and ensure fair and accurate voter rolls by relieving the administrative problems that accompany disenfranchisement polices.
“The act of voting is pregnant with so many good virtues that it totally stands to reason that people who engage in those good virtues are going to be people who are more successful when they are reintegrated,” Pérez said.
But the states don’t have to adhere to Holder’s calls for change because state law sets the rules by which people can vote, which has caused the Obama administration great consternation on other voting rights issues such as voter identification laws, which have been shown to prevent people of color and the poor from going to the polls. Holder, in August 2013, called for the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
Since Holder’s Tuesday speech, Republican leaders have indicated they are not willing to budge on their state policies, with Frank Collins, a spokesman for Florida Gov. Rick Scott, telling The New York Times that Holder’s speech “has no effect on Florida’s Constitution, which prescribes that individuals who commit felonies forfeit their right to vote.”
Still, the idea that Holder’s speech is simply scratching at the surface of the issue to pay lip service to civil rights and mass incarceration without seriously addressing the problems certainly holds water for some. Bruce A. Dixon, managing editor of the Black Agenda Report who also serves on the state committee for the Georgia Green Party, said the speech was another indicator of what he called the Black political establishment’s complacency with issues of mass incarceration.
“Their concern with the issue is like drive-by deep. If they can get away with making a few pronouncements, and keeping people on the hook so that they’ll line up and vote for the Democrats again in the next year, than that’s all they’ll do,” Dixon said. “They don’t really have any skin in the game in any important way…. they’re not trying to shrink the numbers of people in prison.”
Dixon pointed to the track record of political officials, like Holder, who he says have done little to rein in organizations like the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, which has issued statements defending policies widely held to contribute to the mass incarceration of people of color.
“If Holder and his bosses really meant to do anything about mass incarceration they could make heads roll among these assistant U.S. district attorneys, or they could engage in some public rhetoric against them to set the table for a national discussion of this stuff,” Dixon said. “It’s really not just Eric Holder; it’s the entire Black political class.”
One sure route to enfranchise felons would be to pass the Democracy Restoration Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan). The bill would restore the right to vote to U.S. citizens who are released from prison or serving probation sentences, but the bill has languished since it was introduced in 2009.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is drafting a somewhat similar bill, the Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act, for restoration of voting rights for those convicted of nonviolent felonies. Senator Rand opposes disenfranchisement law in Kentucky, which is among the states barring voting rights from felons for life.
Dixon argued for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee the right to vote to all. “Once you make the right to vote a constitutional right, then that means no county court and no state government can make up laws that will impede it unless they fit federal guidelines. It also means that there will be uniform standards nationwide for how votes are counted and how elections are run.”
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