many states enacted or modified their felony disenfranchisement laws in the Jim Crow era as a way to suppress the voting power of black citizens

Restoring Voting Rights: A Progressive Goal Conservatives Can Share (3 comments )
READ MORE: Florida, Charlie Crist, United States, Maryland, U.S. Republican Party, Bill McCollum

Stating "I believe in my heart that everybody deserves a second chance," Florida's Republican Governor Charlie Crist is hoping to announce this week that Florida will restore voting rights for most people with felony convictions who have completed their criminal sentences. Restoration is a long-overdue reform. Nationally, it is also a reform on which the left and the right increasingly agree.
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overnor Crist's proposal accelerates a trend that already has momentum. Since 1997, sixteen states have reduced barriers to voting by people with criminal records. Leaders embracing the trend span the political spectrum. Ten years ago then-Texas Governor George W. Bush -- hardly known as soft on crime -- signed a bill into law that restored voting rights to people who completed their sentences. Likewise, the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, which last fall released its report, "Building Confidence in U.S. Elections," agreed that re-enfranchisement of ex-felons is a voting-rights issue, not a punishment issue, and that states should restore voting rights to persons who have completed their sentences.

On the left, Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack issued an Independence Day Executive Order in 2005 restoring the right to vote to tens of thousands of Iowans who had completed their sentences. And last week, the heavily Democratic Maryland legislature passed a bill restoring the right to vote to 50,000 Maryland citizens, which Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is expected to sign into law soon.

Politicians' efforts to restore voting rights have been surpassed by the political rank-and-file. Last November a majority of Rhode Island voters approved a ballot measure amending the state constitution and restoring the right to vote to 15,000 of their fellow citizens as soon as they are released from prison--even prior to the completion of supervised release.

The United States is the only democracy in the world that disenfranchises people who have completed their criminal sentences. By comparison, in most European nations, some or all prisoners are entitled to vote. Although the practice of disenfranchisement predates the Civil War, many states enacted or modified their felony disenfranchisement laws in the Jim Crow era as a way to suppress the voting power of black citizens. Make no mistake; the laws continue to have that effect. Nationwide, 13% of black men are disenfranchised because of a felony conviction, a rate that is seven times the national average. In Florida that figure is a startling 18.8%. ...