Felons deserve the right to vote: "disenfranchisement laws not only are unfair, they are undemocratic and injurious. They compromise the country's political legitimacy and its moral authority to exact obedience and loyalty from those it presumes to represent.".

• Author: Hull, Elizabeth
• Position: Laws & Justice

IN THE 2000 presidential election, one of 50 U.S. adult citizens--4,200,000 nationwide--were ineligible to vote. These disempowered Americans are former convicts, men and women who have completed their sentences, paroles, and the terms of probation but still are prohibited by many slate laws from casting a ballot. In a country that has extended voting privileges to virtually every other class of citizen, members of this group are deemed unworthy to exercise what the Supreme Court has labeled "the right preservative of all other rights." Unfortunately for ex-prisoners, Article 2 of the 14th Amendment permits states to deny voting privileges to anyone found guilty of "rebellion or other serious crimes."

On Dec. 9, 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court halted a ballot recount underway in Florida because, it said, the standards being used to determine "voter intent" differed from county to county, thereby denying the state's residents Their constitutional right to equal protection. This incosistence is virtually inconsequential, however, compared to the disparate treatment former inmates receive throughout the country when they attempt to vote. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia restrict the voting rights of felons in some manner. The lone exceptions am Maine and Vermont. Thirty two states bar parolees from voting, and 29 forbid anyone on probation from casting a ballot. While many states automatically reenfranchise felons once they are released from prison. 14 others effectively prohibit even those who have "paid their debts" from ever voting again. Alabama, for example, imposes a lifetime ban whether the individual is convicted of a Federal or state oflense, whereas Arizona mid Maryland do so following a second felony conviction. In Tennessee, it affects only those whose offenses occulted before 1986, and in Washington state the ban applies to individuals whose crimes took place before 1984.

Among the states, moreover, what constitutes a felony is neither logical nor consistent. In Maryland, for instance, criminals cannot vote for the rest of their lives if they are twice convicted of a felony (or what the state calls "infamous crimes"). Yet, many of the 149 offenses so categorized--such as inserting slugs into a slot machine or using a false identification card are regarded in other states as misdemeanors. Any Floridian who stops payment on a check of more than $150 with intent to defraud commits a felony; so does the teenager who is caught with an ounce of crock co caine, but the recreational user who is nabbed for cocaine (in powder form) possession is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Such wildly divergent policies defy the move toward "uniform national standards" that an election-reform commission, prompted by the Court's ruling in Bask v. Gore, urged upon the country. There is another. even more important reason why stripping voting rights from former inmates is objectionable: The policy creates what Human Rights Watch calls "a huge pool of political outcasts in America." The organization further indicates that it knows "of no other country in the world that permanently disenfranchises ex-offenders." Indeed, many other liberal, democratic nations, including Germany, France, and, most recently, South Africa, extend the franchise even to...