Thread: We Talked to Five Ex-Felons Whose Voting Rights Have Been Restored

The right to vote is not based on good behavior, it's based on citizenship.

Does the U.S. Constitution Guarantee Americans an Affirmative Individual Right to Vote?

September 13, 2011
Guest Post

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This post is part of an ACSblog Constitution Week Symposium. The author,Congressman Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-IL-2), examines the need for ‘uniform’ voting standards.

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The United States has a republican form of government. It's not a direct democracy, but a representative democracy.
If someone asked you to establish priorities in our democracy - to decide what the most important element of our democracy would be - how would you rank the following?
_____ The right to free speech
_____ The right to vote
_____ The right to free enterprise
_____ The right to freedom of religion
_____ The right to freedom of assembly and protest
I don’t know how high the percentage would be, but in our democracy I believe the vast majority of Americans would select "the right to vote."

But do we have a fundamental affirmative individual right to vote in our Constitution? The answer may surprise you - "No."

The 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments outlaw discrimination in voting on the basis of race, sex and age respectively, but they do not guarantee eligible American citizens an affirmative individual or citizenship right to vote.

Our voting system - 13,000 "separate and unequal" election jurisdictions - is based on the legal foundation of states' rights and local control. Each of us has a "state right" to vote based on that state's laws. For example, some states keep ex-felons from voting for life, others allow ex-felons to vote once they've paid their debt to society. Two states - Vermont and Maine - allow prisoners to vote from jail.

Our nation's highest court gives us a glimpse into the constitutional priorities of this republic. On June 26, 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guaranteed a fundamental “individual right to a gun.”

On December 12, 2000, in Bush v. Gore the U.S. Supreme Court said that “the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote." As a result, states’ rights reigned over individual rights because there is no citizenship right to vote in the Constitution. A federal right to vote in the Constitution would have required all the votes to be counted because an individual right to vote would have taken precedence over Florida's law.

Of the 119 nations that select their public officials using some form of democratic election, 108 have the right to vote in their constitution, but the United States is one of the other 11 nations - including Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan and Singapore - that lacks that essential provision.

There are many who would say, "So what? It works. We have the greatest and longest existing democracy in the history of the world!" So we have to ask ourselves, does our states' rights and separate and unequal voting system have any negative consequences or dangerous implications for our democracy? A California Technical Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Voting Technology Project in 2001 estimated that 4-to-6 million votes in the 2000 election were lost and not counted due to administrative problems, problems that could have been solved in a unified national voting system.

The U.S. Senate Rules Committee on March 11, 2009, released a comprehensive study by MIT (a collaborative effort of 30 research teams that involved 34 different research organizations) of the 2008 election that revealed astounding problems with the United States voter registration system that resulted in an estimated 7 million eligible and/or registered voters nationally not being allowed to vote for a variety of reasons – voter ID issues; computer errors (no match/no vote comparisons); an absentee ballot not sent; a voter registration form not turned in by a third party; wrongful purges; uncounted provisional ballots; too few polling places; non-compliance with the mandates of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by Departments of Motor Vehicles and other designated government agencies; long lines at polling places; the allocation of voting machines; ex-felon issues; dirty tricks of voter suppression (e.g., robo calls giving misdirected or false information to voters); lack of voter education and information; inadequate election resources; name changes (because of marriage or divorce) not recorded with voter registrars; and more.

The 2009 MIT study also found that an additional 9 million potential voters who tried to register were prevented from doing so for a variety of technical reasons – e.g., missed deadlines; changes in residency; or other non-essential issues.

And according to a U.S. Senate survey released by Senator Charles E. Schumer (NY-D) on May 13, 2009, in the 2008 election more than one-fourth of the ballots requested by U.S. military personnel deployed overseas – and other eligible voters living abroad – went either uncollected or uncounted.

While we tout our democracy, we have among the lowest voter participation rates in the world.
All of this proves unequivocally that our voting system absolutely carries negative consequences for our democracy. We need uniform national standards in the administration of elections by state and local election officials. House Joint Resolution 28 - which I've introduced in the House - would solve that problem by granting Congress the authority to establish a uniform voting system and review its effectiveness every four years.

Until every American has an affirmative individual right to vote protected by our nation's most important document, our democracy and the Constitution itself remain incomplete - and I believe America deserves more.

http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/does-t...-right-to-vote


Here it is in a nutshell as ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court:

On December 12, 2000, in Bush v. Gore the U.S. Supreme Court said that “the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote.

There are two groups of Americans, one group who knows their rights, and another who looks to government to tell them what they are.

And there's the group that can tell the difference between actual rights and a special interest agenda.

Yes, and restoring actual rights to US citizens like voting rights that are wrongfully taken by the government is an important special interest agenda that all of US should support. The problem with denying voting rights to felons is there's no basis for it.

A felon is someone who broke the law. Most people in prison today are in prison for non-violent drug charges. The drug laws are the reason we have the highest rate of incarceration than any other country in the world. No one should lose their voting rights over the failed and misguided War on Drugs.

There are also many people on death row who are innocent, we know this from the Innocence Project. No one on death row who is innocent should lose their voting rights.

When we perpetuate a War on Drugs that only benefits the illegal drug cartels and still convict innocent people, our system is flawed, so when a flawed system of laws passed by politicians who were elected by voters, and the victims of those flawed laws have no say in the process to fix the flaws, then the entire purpose of voting rights has been disabled because the victims have become political prisoners of an imperfect system they have no power to help change, fix or improve.

Just because someone violated a law that resulted in a felony and imprisonment is not a solid reason to tell citizens of the United States you don't count any more and your opinion or choice is no longer wanted or valid.

Also, there are a lot of really bad people roaming our country free as birds, who have stolen jobs, depressed wages, poisoned our soils, water and people, shipped our jobs and manufacturing overseas leaving a permanent trail of poverty, unemployment, despair, crime and heartache, who have arrested the wrong person, who still target race groups, and incarcerated and even executed innocent people.

We are not a perfect society and these imperfections are flaws that as time goes along need to be fixed and remedied so that we work towards a more perfect union. When we ostracize or exclude citizens from voting, good, bad or otherwise, we deny not only their right to be heard, their opinion to be voiced, their plights to be remedied, we also fail in our own march towards a better country.

Originally Posted by Judy

Yes, and restoring actual rights to US citizens like voting rights that are wrongfully taken by the government is an important special interest agenda that all of US should support. The problem with denying voting rights to felons is there's no basis for it.

A felon is someone who broke the law. Most people in prison today are in prison for non-violent drug charges. The drug laws are the reason we have the highest rate of incarceration than any other country in the world. No one should lose their voting rights over the failed and misguided War on Drugs.

There are also many people on death row who are innocent, we know this from the Innocence Project. No one on death row who is innocent should lose their voting rights.

When we perpetuate a War on Drugs that only benefits the illegal drug cartels and still convict innocent people, our system is flawed, so when a flawed system of laws passed by politicians who were elected by voters, and the victims of those flawed laws have no say in the process to fix the flaws, then the entire purpose of voting rights has been disabled because the victims have become political prisoners of an imperfect system they have no power to help change, fix or improve.

Just because someone violated a law that resulted in a felony and imprisonment is not a solid reason to tell citizens of the United States you don't count any more and your opinion or choice is no longer wanted or valid.

Also, there are a lot of really bad people roaming our country free as birds, who have stolen jobs, depressed wages, poisoned our soils, water and people, shipped our jobs and manufacturing overseas leaving a permanent trail of poverty, unemployment, despair, crime and heartache, who have arrested the wrong person, who still target race groups, and incarcerated and even executed innocent people.

We are not a perfect society and these imperfections are flaws that as time goes along need to be fixed and remedied so that we work towards a more perfect union. When we ostracize or exclude citizens from voting, good, bad or otherwise, we deny not only their right to be heard, their opinion to be voiced, their plights to be remedied, we also fail in our own march towards a better country.

To that I'll repeat myself:

"Allowing murderers, drug dealers, rapists and child molesters among others to vote is absurd. With the rights of citizenship comes responsibility. Those that have committed a felony crime have failed in their responsibilities as a good citizen and are being punished. With that punishment comes the revoking of certain freedoms, which, in my opinion, should include the right to vote. Someone serving time for rape, child molestation, murder, etc. should not have a say in how our society functions. Furthermore, it's beyond me why anyone would want these people involved in making decisions that could impact the rule of law.

Another good reason for not allowing prison inmates to vote is because of the possibility of undue influence through acts of coercion or the offering of rewards from prison parole boards, wardens, and guards. Prisoners live in an extremely controlled environment and are strongly influenced by those who directly control their everyday life. Moreover, prisoners do not have the ability to follow, research, and become familiar with the candidates like we do. Basically, to some extent, they're isolate from the outside world. So yes, what the warden or guard offers to give or take away from them would greatly influence their decision. Promise a prisoner more recreation time and a rib-eye steak dinner on Sunday night and you can get almost anything you want. On the other hand, threaten to reduce a prisoners rec. and phone time, same effect."

Folks can draw their own conclusions as to whether you're right, I'm right, or the answer is somewhere in the middle. I'm through debating this with you because you obviously want the last word. Okay, go ahead and take it.