A nation in which 4 million Americans were denied the right to vote due to a felony conviction has just elected a president who was convicted of 34 felony charges.
In Florida, where President-elect Donald Trump is registered to vote, a person convicted of a felony can vote only after completing the terms of their sentence, including full payment of any fines, fees, costs and restitution.
Trump, who in May was convicted in New York for falsifying business records, has not yet been sentenced, much less completed the terms of his sentence.
But under Florida state law, a person convicted in another state loses their voter eligibility only if the conviction would make them ineligible to vote in that state. In New York, only people who are currently imprisoned on a felony conviction are restricted from casting ballots.
Florida is one of two states, along with Tennessee, where more than 6% of the adult population, or one out of every 17 adults, is barred from voting. More than 961,000 Floridians are currently banned from voting, according to The Sentencing Project. The vast majority of them — an estimated 730,000 — have served their sentences but remain disenfranchised because they cannot afford to pay court-ordered fines, fees and costs.
Trump’s election has exposed these policies for the racially discriminatory hypocrisy that they are.
Felony disenfranchisement is undeniably rooted in white supremacy. In order to be admitted to the Union after the Civil War, the former Confederate states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed the privileges of citizenship — including the right to vote — to formerly enslaved Americans.
Prohibited by federal law from barring Black voters, southern states quickly enacted measures known as the Black Codes, establishing severe penalties for minor and vaguely-defined crimes like vagrancy. At the same time, these states rushed to prohibit anyone with a felony conviction from voting.
Black Americans are more than three times as likely to be disenfranchised as other groups. A stunning one in 22 Black Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, about 4.5%, compared to 1.3% of non-Black adults. In five states, more than one in 10 Black adults is disenfranchised: Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, South Dakota and Tennessee. In 15 states, 5% or more of the Black adult population is banned from voting.
Against felons, ‘old forms of discrimination … are legal’
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s seminal work about the racism that underlies mass incarceration in the U.S., she pointed out that a current-day convicted felon in Alabama has “scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a Black man in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.”
“Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination — employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service — are suddenly legal,” she wrote.
Felon disenfranchisement puts the United States out of step with the rest of the world; most countries either do not deny the right to vote to those convicted of felonies or do so only in limited and rare circumstances.
While still unacceptable, the number of Americans disenfranchised for felony convictions has declined by 31%, thanks to new laws and policies and a shrinking population of those in prison or on probation and parole.
Only Maine, Vermont and the District of Columbia allow people convicted of felonies to vote even while they are incarcerated. In 23 states, voting rights are restored automatically upon release from incarceration. In 15 states, voting rights are not restored until completion of parole and/or probation.
And in 10 states, including Florida, people convicted of felonies lose their voting rights indefinitely or require additional measures like payment of fines and fees before voting rights are restored. In Virginia, the power to restore voting rights rests in the hands of a single individual, Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
As a relic of Jim Crow white supremacy, felony disenfranchisement is inconsistent with the principles of fairness and democracy. It is a barrier to successful reentry, as individuals can only truly feel part of a community when they can fully participate in civic life.
It’s long past time to relegate these racist policies to the past.
Marc H. Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League and was mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002. He writes a twice-monthly column for the Sun-Times.
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