Felon Enfranchisement
From Wiscopedia
Every society is founded on the rule of law; not just on a functioning judicial system but on a shared conception of what justice is. The Founders of this country, looking for inspiration, drew from John Locke's insistence that a government must protect not only the rights of men (and back then it was only men) from being trampled but their safety from being endangered. A system of justice was meant to protect the lives and livelihood of the innocent, prosecute the guilty and deter those who might wish to commit future crimes. As our standards have evolved, we have come to realize that meeting those ideals did not require locking up every convicted criminal and throwing away the key, no matter how small the offense. Just as we no longer leave suspects to languish in the Tower of London we have come to realize that part of the incarceration process is rehabilitation.
To that end, we allow misdemeanants and felons reentry into society after their debt has been paid. We have a graduated system of parole and rehabilitation. For some states, that return to society has been constrained by attempts to keep citizens whose debt to society is paid from fully participating. Wisconsin, along with 20 other states, bars felons undergoing parole from voting. This law, a throwback to Jim Crow laws which barred mostly black voters from the franchise, limits civic participation, unfairly targets low income voters, and further isolates parolees from society.
The Legacy of Jim Crow
- Most modern felon disenfranchisement laws were created during reconstruction in order to deny African Americans the effective right to vote, according to a study of criminal disenfranchisement law published by the Wisconsin Law Review in 2002.
- Unlike prior laws in England and colonial America, the Jim Crow criminal disenfranchisement laws removed suffrage for common crimes and crimes which only resulted in charges against African Americans.
- Carter Glass, delegate to the Virginia convention of 1906, explaining that state's criminal disenfranchisement law:
This plan of popular suffrage will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years, so that in no single county of the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.
This disproportionate impact is not in the past. Today, in Wisconsin, one in nine African American voters are denied the franchise, compared to one in fifty Wisconsin voters overall. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that even in 2008, felony conviction rates (and therefore subsequent disenfranchisement) for minorities higher than could be explained by rates of criminal activity. The vast majority of those without the franchise are not in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that over 41,000 individuals on parole or probation individuals paying taxes and contributing to the community have been denied the right to vote.
The Right to Vote
- In a democracy, voting is a right. Jim Crow laws painted voting as a privilege to be exercised only by those who could do so in a measured and reasoned way this paved the way for literacy tests and poll taxes which served to do nothing but rob African Americans of the right to vote.
- No other democracy in the world bars past felons from voting. Several countries even allow inmates to vote from prison.
- Specific differences exist in how the laws are applied across racial and ethnic communities. Even controlling for differences in crime rates, felony conviction rates are higher for blacks and latinos.
Laws restraining citizens from defending their constitutional rights may sometimes be justified on the basis of a strong public interest. An appeal to this interest is often invoked by advocates of barring felons from voting. Stories are told (always in the hypothetical) of felons endangering citizens at the ballot box, voting in politicians soft on crime, or conspiring to commit election crimes. None of these tales are borne out by the facts.
The Facts About Criminal Disenfranchisement
- A comprehensive review of the literature on felon enfranchisement showed that returning the franchise to felons produced no increase in crime (election or otherwise).
- The political alignment of ex-felons is broad and diverse, according to a study by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. Even President Bush asserted that felons deserved a second chance from society.
- No verifiable evidence exists of election crimes committed (apart from the crime of accidentally registering to vote) by felons as an attempt to game the system.
Current Wisconsin law on this issue can't draw its lineage from Robert LaFollete here. In 2008, Jim Crow laws are still on the books in Wisconsin. The American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American way have several documents informing voters of their rights and where those rights are trammeled by regressive legislation still on the books.
Sources
The New Face of Jim Crow:Voter Suppression in America. (August 2006) People for the American Way. http://media.pfaw.org/PDF/Reports/TheNewFaceOfJimCrow.pdf
Felon Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States (March 2008) The Sentencing Project http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/fd_bs_fdlawsinus.pdf
C Uggen, J Manza Voting and Subsequent Crime and Arrest: Evidence from a Community Sample (2004) Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 193-215. http://www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen/Uggen_Manza_04_CHRLR2.pdf
Ewald, Alec C. "CIVIL DEATH": THE IDEOLOGICAL PARADOX OF CRIMINAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT LAW IN THE UNITED STATES (2002) 2002 Wis. L. Rev. 1045 http://direct.bl.uk/bld/PlaceOrder.do?UIN=126324728&ETOC=RN&from=searchengine
Analysis of Alleged Fraud in Briefs Supporting Crawford Respondents (December 31, 2007) Brennan Center for Justice http://truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/CrawfordAllegations.pdf
