Last Thursday, August 6th marked the 44th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.  Some positive things can certainly be said about the legacy of the VRA, which eliminated poll taxes and literacy tests and contributed within a few years of its passage to huge jumps in voter registration rates among African Americans. 

The 4 decades since African Americans were granted the right to vote under the VRA have included many milestones, not the least of which was recent election of an African American president and a record breaking turnout in that election, of African American women voters.  Yet concerns about voter discrimination continue under the auspices of criminal disenfranchisement. 

According to a 2008 ACLU/Brennan Center report, as a whole, approximately 5.3 million U.S. citizens are barred from voting as a result of a criminal conviction, and 4 million of those are currently living, working, and raising families in our communities.  Because of the disproportional representation of African American men in the criminal justice system, those laws and policies that exclude citizens from their fundamental right to vote on the basis of conviction of a crime inherently disenfranchise disproportionately more Black men.[1] 

African American men have been disenfranchised at seven times the national average, with an average of 13% of African-American men having lost the right to vote.  Shockingly, in three states, over 20 percent of the African-American voting-age population is disenfranchised and according to current estimates, almost one third (3 in 10) of the next generation of African-American men will lose the right to vote during their lifetime.

In addition to discriminatory impact, criminal disenfranchisement laws are rooted in discriminatory intent.  As explained by Erika Wood, head of the Brennan Center’s Right to Vote project


“Let's be clear, these laws were put in place right alongside poll taxes and literacy tests. In the late 1800s, as part of larger backlash against the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, criminal disenfranchisement laws spread throughout the country. At the same time, states expanded their criminal codes to punish offenses that they believed freed slaves were most likely to commit, including vagrancy, petty larceny and bigamy. This targeted criminalization and criminal disenfranchisement combined to produce the legal loss of voting rights, which effectively suppressed the power of African Americans for decades.”


Here in Maine, we can be proud of being one of only two states (Vermont being the other) that never disenfranchises felons.  This policy has broad support, even from law enforcement who understand that continuing to disfranchise individuals after release from prison doesn't reduce crime.  In fact, allowing people with felony convictions to vote encourages civic engagement, strengthens the base of our democracy, and may even reduce recidivism by encouraging community investment. In fact, one study found that former offenders who voted were half as likely to be re-arrested as those who did not.

The American Probation and Parole Association; Association of Paroling Authorities International; the National Black Police Association; and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives are just some of the law enforcement organizations that have expressed support for laws ensuring that people with past felony convictions are allowed to vote.

But in the rest of the country, the laws governing felons right to vote in state and federal elections are varied and restrictive.  Forty-eight States and the District of Columbia deprive convicted offenders of the right to vote while they are in prison; 35 States prevent convicted offenders from voting while on parole and 30 of these States also disenfranchise felony probationers.  Most severe, in 10 States, a conviction can result in lifetime disenfranchisement.

The serious equal protection and due process implications of extensive yet piecemeal felony disenfranchisement supported the need for a federal legislative solution.  On July 26th, Senator Russell Feingold and Representative John Conyers introduced the Democracy Restoration Act.  The DRA would establish a federal standard to restore voting rights in federal elections to nearly 4 million Americans who have been released from prison and are living in the community; ensure that probationers never lose their right to vote in federal elections; and notify people about their right to vote in federal elections.


It is hard to overstate the broad reaching and long term impacts of policies which result in effectively silencing or stifling the voice of a significant group in the electoral process.  As the Supreme Court has indicated, "[n]o right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined."   

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[1] While the focus here is on African American men, these policies also prevent people who are disproportionately minority, disproportionately mentally ill, disproportionately substance dependent, and disproportionately poor from exercising their fundamental right to a voice in the electoral process.