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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Who votes? Prison to the polls
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Jul 05, 2005 07:40am |
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| Category | Editorial |
| Media | Newspaper - Seattle Post-Intelligencer |
| News Date | Tuesday, July 5, 2005 01:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Among the grounds argued for overturning the election of Gov. Christine Gregoire was that many of the 1,678 ballots identified as illegal were cast by people with felony convictions whose voting rights had not been restored.
Several progressive organizations have offered a simple and sensible fix: Drop the arcane practice of denying a fundamental civil right to those who have served their time behind bars.
The history of denying the voting franchise to convicted felons is long but not particularly admirable. According to Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, disenfranchisement laws have their roots in the medieval concept of "civil death," in which offenders lost property and other fundamental rights. The concept bled over into the Colonies and into America's founding. They were applied selectively in the post-Reconstruction era in the South to limit, or eliminate, the influence of the newly freed slaves as voters.
The Washington Constitution disqualifies "All persons convicted of infamous crime unless restored to their civil rights and all persons while they are judicially declared mentally incompetent are excluded from the elective franchise."
The Legislature should change law to automatically restore felons' right to vote upon release from prison, tempered with the threat of again denying that right should ex-offenders fail to live up to any financial restitution agreements resulting from their convictions. |
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