Ex-Felons Voting: New Civil Rights Issue

Should ex-felons who've completed their criminal sentences andpaid their debt to society be allowed to vote?

For some 200 years, various states have said ``no'' by enactingso-called ``civil death'' laws, denying former criminals the right tore-enter the democratic process.

Florida's civil death law had sensational impact this year. It kept somany African-Americans away from the polls that the state, and thus thepresidency of the United States, were delivered to George W. Bush.

Blacks in Florida went for Al Gore by a 93 percent majority. But400,000 black Floridians, or 31 percent of the state's black men, aredisenfranchised because of felony convictions, according to estimates bythe Washington-based Sentencing Project.

According to a different study--this one by criminologists ChristopherUggen of the University of Minnesota and Jeff Manza of NorthwesternUniversity--13.8 percent of all Florida blacks are excluded from voting bytheir felony records.

Workers for a Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) program focused onAfrican-American Floridians reported that time and again, members of blackhouseholds they contacted said they couldn't vote because of their criminalrecords.

Count as you will, civil death switched the Florida outcome.

And with a strong helping hand from Florida Secretary of StateKatherine Harris, Jeb Bush's close ally, according to reports in Slate, theon-line magazine, and several major newspapers. Harris hired ``ChoicePoint,'' a firm with strong conservative ties, to ``cleanse'' voter rolls.The company's list of alleged ex-felons, circulated to county votingofficials, was heavily weighted with African-Americans. Later it turned outthe list was unverified and contained thousands of incorrect entries,imperiling legal registrants.

Civil death carries greater weight these days because of America'sastronomic (fivefold) rise of incarceration of the last 25 years--the fruitof politically motivated ``tough on crime'' federal and state statutes.

.A major factor in the incarceration craze: the ``war on drugs,''championed by Presidents Reagan and Bush--and continued by Clinton--andvote-grabbing legislators coast to coast. Featuring radically more severeenforcement in black communities than white, this war divides anddevastates millions of black families. In many poor black neighborhoodstoday, time behind bars is the expected fate for young men.

Result: imprisonment is becoming a salient civil rights issue.Hundreds of thousands of black youth are being disenfranchised before theyhave a chance to cast a single ballot.

Al Gore, note black critics, refused to speak out on this issue,despite entreaties from Jesse Jackson and others.

And, just as the disputed Tilden-Hayes presidential election of 1876led to a deal in which Reconstruction-era protections of Southern blackswere terminated--unleashing the Ku Klux Klan and decades of black exclusionfrom the polls--African-American leaders see ominous undercurrents in the2000 presidential election.

Exaggerated fears? Perhaps. But check Florida and see it their way:Long lines at voting places. Thousands of people mysteriously removed fromvoter lists or then challenged and turned away. Dysfunctional phones tocheck registration discrepancies (rather than the wired-in laptops oftenpresent in white or Cuban-American districts). Unreliable punch-card votingmachines. Less access to electronic voting systems that warn voters ofmismarked ballots.

Add to that the Bush campaign's immediate moves to prevent recounts ofundervotes and overvotes--mostly in minority areas. A civil death lawdefended, days before the election, by a Jeb Bush aide. ARepublican-controlled Legislature ready to certify Florida electors forBush, no matter what the count. And a U.S. Supreme Court, loaded withReagan and Bush the elder appointees, stopping recounts and deciding forGWB on suspiciously murky grounds.

Some elements were likely accidental--polling places unprepared for adramatic increase of black turnout, for example. But take the totality, putyourself in the victim's seat, and then tell me youwouldn't worry.

In that light, Gov. Jeb Bush's newly named bipartisan task force tolook into and suggest changes in Florida's election system is positivenews--but only if it moves beyond such issues as replacing punch-cardballots to basic system inequities.

Indeed, for a healthier democracy in Florida and elsewhere, a reformagenda is clear: Fair and clear registration procedures; new electronicvoting systems; and then, abolition of all laws that prevent felons fromvoting once they've finished their sentences.

Florida is one of nine states with lifetime prohibitions on felonsvoting. Others are Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, NewMexico, Virginia, Wyoming (plus, in more limited form, Arizona, Maryland,Tennessee and Washington).

All such laws need to go. Why? ``It's totally indefensible to create apermanent outlaw caste,'' says the ACLU's Voting Rights Project director,Laughlin McDonald.

Just as vital, I'd say, we need to reintegrate ex-prisoners into ourcommunities. Some 97 percent of those imprisoned willcome back. They need counseling, jobs, a sense of being valued--and theresponsibility to their fellow citizens that the very act of voting oughtto symbolize.