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Theodore Dortch,37, is a former felon who had his voting rights in Virginia restored this year. Today he voted for the first time pic.twitter.com/WNFlkwOyrc

— Sam Levine (@srl) November 7, 2017

Bobby Lee voted today for the 3rd time in his life. He had his voting rights stripped because of a felony and couldn’t vote until he was 60 pic.twitter.com/cf4lanOlMf

— Sam Levine (@srl) November 7, 2017

Wali R. Bahar had his voting rights restored and after he cast a ballot today said he felt like he was on the shoulders of giants pic.twitter.com/zIt6nDAQ25

— Sam Levine (@srl) November 7, 2017

Brianna Ross lost her right to vote when she was 19 because she stole diapers for her son. Today she voted for the first time in her life. pic.twitter.com/xyAb9fiFW8

— Sam Levine (@srl) November 7, 2017

Felony Disenfranchisement: A Holdover from the Jim Crow Era by Ben Jealous in 2013

Felony disenfranchisement has direct roots in the Jim Crow Era. In the late 19th century, states above and below the Mason-Dixon Line began to find new and creative ways to keep black voters away from the polls. Banning people with felony convictions was one of the solutions.

For example, in 1901 the Commonwealth of Virginia had 147,000 black voters on the rolls. But many lawmakers saw this growing political block as a threat. At that year’s Constitutional Convention, they hatched a plan to disenfranchise African Americans through a combination of black codes and felony disenfranchisement. One legislator said on the record that the plan would “eliminate the darkey as a political factor.”

Ninety years later, Kemba Smith-Pradia was an undergraduate student at Hampton University. She got involved with the wrong crowd and found herself behind bars as an accessory to a nonviolent drug offense. President Clinton granted Kemba executive clemency in 2000, six years into her 24-year sentence. She went on to become a college graduate, law student, mother and foundation president — but until 2012, when her rights were finally restored, not a voter.

Kemba’s story is just one example of how the legacy of the 1901 Convention lives on. In today’s Virginia, 350,000 people are still disenfranchised by the 1901 law, and many of them are African Americans. Nationwide, 48 states allow some form of felony disenfranchisement, and one out of every 13 voting-age African Americans is affected. In four states — Virginia, Iowa, Kentucky, and Florida — disenfranchisement can be permanent.

Ex-Felons Voting for the First Time Could Shake Virginia Governor’s Race

In Virginia’s closely watched gubernatorial election, Republican Ed Gillespie has spent weeks airing ads lashing out at illegal immigrants, sex offenders, and people with felonies, boasting that he’s got the law-and-order creds to keep wrongdoers in line.

But Virginians with criminal records might get the last word, because for the first time in a long time, a huge group of ex-felons will help pick the state’s next governor.

Virginia is one of four states that permanently disenfranchise people with felonies, even after they’ve served their sentences. While the state’s governor is allowed to restore individuals’ right to vote, last year Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe shocked conservatives by signing an order restoring rights to more than 200,000 people who had completed their sentences and parole. Republican lawmakers successfully sued to block the move, arguing that he lacked authority to restore rights en masse. So McAuliffe’s administration started handing out the orders one by one; more than 168,000 ex-offenders have since had their voting rights returned. About 42,000 of them have registered to vote.

“That’s a large chunk of people we’ve added back to the electorate,” says Marcia Price, a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates and a campaign co-chair for Lt. Governor Ralph Northam, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

N.J. should restore voting rights to non-violent ex-felons

Millions of New Jerseyans are expected to go to the polls to choose our state’s leaders Tuesday, while 94,000 of us will be locked out of the process because of a law rooted in Jim Crow.

These people have jobs and families and driver’s licenses and property and a civic conscience. The difference is they have committed a felony, and in New Jersey, you are denied the right to vote if you are in jail, on parole, or on probation.

In other words, many already have been punished for their crimes, yet we want to continue to punish them – an absurd cycle of injustice that should be addressed and abolished by our government, because this isn’t complicated: If you’ve served your time, you should have the right to choose your representatives just like everyone else.

But felony disenfranchisement – “the very antithesis of rehabilitation,” Justice William Brennan once called it – is common throughout the United States, which has only 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners.

It helps to recall the origins of mass incarceration, and how its aims prevail today. It has had a predominant racial component since Reconstruction, when Southern states targeted African Americans to deplete the electoral strength of newly-freed populations. By 1890, this discriminatory application of the law led to a Southern prison population that was 90 percent black, former Attorney General Eric Holder pointed out recently.

In Florida, Felons Want Voting Rights Back As Soon As They Complete Their Sentences

On most days from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Mary Grimes can be found pacing along a crowded street in Orlando, Fla., with clipboards in both hands.

“Can I have five minutes of your time?” the 58-year-old says to a parade of passers-by. Those who are in a rush, she quickly wishes well; the others, Grimes directs to a blue and yellow form, reciting her spiel and soliciting a signature from each.

For several months, she has made her living this way. She transforms public parking lots, city parks and sidewalks into a home office from which she urges registered voters to endorse proposed constitutional amendments.

But for her, this is more than a way to pay rent.

“This is what I’m really praying for,” she says pointing to a stack of yellow petitions inside her bag one afternoon outside Orlando’s downtown public library.

Thousands of petitions like these are circulating across Florida in an unprecedented grass-roots campaign to restore voting rights to the state’s more than 1.6 million felons who have completed their sentences. This includes Grimes. At 17, she was sent to prison for a burglary. Although she has served her time, Florida law has barred her from participating in municipal and presidential elections for the past 41 years.

Barring felons from voting weakens democracy

The right to vote is a fundamental aspect of any functional democracy. Everyone has the right to make their voices heard to cause change and make a difference in the direction a country takes.

Without the right to vote, the overall power of the people is weakened.

Unfortunately, there is a group of people in the United States who are barred from voting: convicted felons.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “In 38 states and the District of Columbia, most ex-felons automatically gain the right to vote upon the completion of their sentence.”

Those 38 states and Washington, D.C. range from never taking away convicted felons’ right to vote, even in jail, to requiring felons to go through parole and probationary periods following their release.

However, in Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee and Wyoming, felons may lose their right to vote permanently.

According to The Sentencing Project, “The United States remains one of the world’s strictest nations when it comes to denying the right to vote to citizens convicted of crimes. An estimated 6.1 million Americans are forbidden to vote because of ‘felony disenfranchisement,’ or laws restricting voting rights for those convicted of felony-level crimes.”