By Andres Idarraga – 03/04/08
In 2006, the Brennan
Center for Justice provided counsel to
the Rhode Island
Right To Vote campaign. Andres Idarraga was
one of the primary spokespeople for the campaign, and he is one of 15,000 Rhode
Islanders with a conviction in their past who had their right to vote restored
when voters approved a ballot referendum in November 2006. Andres is now a Senior at Brown University. He voted for the first time today, and he
shares these thoughts. —Erika Wood
I
just voted! For first time in my life, I stepped inside the polling place
and "completed the arrow" that selects the candidate I think would
best run our country. It was a simple action that took only a few
minutes, but far too many years to achieve.
I
was sent to prison nine years ago when I was twenty years old. When I was released six years later, I hit
the ground running—determined to give back to my community and become the
role model that I never had. I got a job
and I was accepted into Brown
University. But under Rhode Island's state constitution, I would have
to wait more than thirty years to be able to vote. I couldn't wait that long. So I joined the Rhode Island Right to Vote
campaign and began to work to change the law.
In
November 2006, my fellow Rhode Islanders were the first in the nation to go to
the polls and approve a ballot referendum to restore voting rights to people as
soon as they are released from prison.
Today, the Rhode Island Department of Corrections hands everyone leaving
prison a voter registration form. Today
was the first election in which 15,000 newly eligible Rhode Islanders were able
to cast their ballot, and I was one of them.
Before
voting this morning, I drove my eight-year old nephew to school. My
nephew spent time with me as I worked on the Right to Vote campaign and he came
with me on the day I registered. On the way to school, I asked him if he
knew that today was the day voting took place in Rhode Island. He said he did and asked
me who I was voting for. I told him I was still thinking through my options
and we talked about the various candidates.
This was a conversation I relished. Coming from a family in which
voting had rarely, if ever, been discussed, this was a new beginning. I
hope we have similar conversations in the years to come.
There
is something undeniably inspiring about this election. The historical
significance of having a woman and an African American as viable candidates has
energized the voting public to a level I have never seen before. At my
school, students have been tirelessly advocating for their respective
candidates. At my barbershop, my barber proudly displays a picture of his
candidate on his mirror, a place usually reserved for sports figures or
entertainers. This election is bringing out apathetic voters and first-time
voters, and making both groups feel invested in the future of their
country. I am so proud to be one of them.
As I walked out of the polling place, a local elementary school where
children were playing outside waiting for the school day to begin, I decided to
go back in. I forgot to get an "I Voted" sticker, and, for many
reasons, I wanted to wear one today.
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, State-Based Advocacy, Voting Rights & Elections
By Erika Wood – 04/09/07
*Cross-posted from The Huffington Post
Florida, the scene of infamous election-day chaos and massive voter
purges during the 2000 presidential election, took an important step
towards resolving its democratic crisis yesterday. With the stroke of a
pen, Governor Charlie Crist issued new Rules of Executive Clemency that
restore voting rights to potentially hundreds of thousands of Florida
citizens who had been permanently disenfranchised as the result of a
felony conviction.
Governor Crist's bold
action was just the latest in a national movement that has gained
significant momentum in the past year. Across the country, states are
moving to reinvigorate our democracy by removing the last of the Jim
Crow-era barriers to the ballot box--the laws that disenfranchise
people with felony convictions, even after they have been released from
prison and are living, working, paying taxes, and raising families in
our communities.
Florida's voting ban was one of the harshest in the nation,
disenfranchising more people than any other state. Over 950,000
Floridians, including one in three African-American men, remained
permanently disenfranchised even after they had served their entire
sentence. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
challenged the state's voting practices in a federal lawsuit--Johnson
v. Bush, which helped focus national attention on Florida's criminal
disenfranchisement scheme.
Florida's old clemency rules required everyone with a felony
conviction who wanted to vote to apply individually to the Governor and
the Clemency Board. The burdensome process took years, and even then
there was no guarantee that one's rights would be restored. In fact,
former Governor Jeb Bush denied over 200,000 applications during his
tenure.
Unlike his predecessor, Crist seems to understand that increasing
access to the polls only strengthens our democracy. But even with the
new rules, Florida's felony disenfranchisement laws lag far behind most
of the country. Large numbers of would-be voters are still required to
navigate a slow, complicated, and expensive bureaucratic process and be
subject to the whim of the Clemency Board. The new rules also condition
the right to vote on an applicant's ability to pay restitution. And
there is no easy way for people who finished their sentence long ago to
have their rights restored.
Crist's actions come just one week after legislators in Maryland
took a better route to reforming their complicated felony
disenfranchisement scheme. Last week the Maryland General Assembly
passed a simple bill that would take voting rights away from those
convicted of only the most serious crimes, and will streamline the
process by which people get their voting rights restored once they have
served their sentence. The bill now awaits Governor Martin O'Malley's
signature.
Maryland law disenfranchises anyone who has been convicted of an
"infamous crime" - an archaic legal term that is as hard to apply as it
is to understand. Until the current bill is signed into law, Maryland
was one of only six states that took voting rights away from those
convicted of misdemeanors, and one of only two states in which someone
could lose the right to vote even if he never spent a single night in
jail. A complicated series of qualifications and waiting periods
created needless barriers to people regaining their voting rights even
after they had served their entire sentence. All this will be
simplified by the Assembly bill.
While it would be better if Florida's law were more like Maryland's,
it's a step in the right direction. Five years ago, Maryland changed
its law, from a lifetime ban to the complicated system it now has in
place. But the new law proved difficult to understand and administer,
and the frustration with it helped build momentum for this year's
change. No doubt as the Florida Executive Clemency board applies its
complicated rules, it too will begin to see the wisdom of a simple and
fair restoration process.
But the larger point remains: in the 2000 election, both Florida and
Maryland had lifetime felon voting bans. In the 2008 election, neither
will. Lawmakers are truly beginning to understand the fundamental
unfairness of banning persons with criminal convictions from the ballot
box. And it is not just lawmakers that have come to this understanding.
The American public is overwhelmingly in favor of welcoming voters back
into the political process. A 2002 Harris Interactive poll found that
eighty percent of Americans favor returning voting rights to citizens
who have completed their sentences.
This public support was confirmed this year in Rhode Island. For the
first time in history, voters went to the polls on Election Day and
cast a vote in favor of reenfranchsing persons with criminal
convictions. The voters of Rhode Island amended their state
constitution to restore the right to vote to their fellow citizens as
soon as they are released from prison. A coaltion of Democrats,
Republicans, law enforcement officials, religious organizations, labor
unions, affected communities and civil rights and advocacy groups
banded together to place the measure on the ballot to let the people
decide who should participate in voting. And they chose to invite
people who had paid their debt back onto the voter rolls.
In the last ten years, seventeen states have reformed their laws or
policies to reduce barriers to voting for people with criminal
convictions. Dozens of states, including Alaska, Arizona, Colorado,
Iowa, New York, and Washington are currently considering new measures
to bring more voters back to the polls. The time has come for Kentucky
and Virginia, the only states that continue to permanently ban all
people with felony convictions from voting, to join Florida and the
rest of the country by bringing people into the democratic process, not
shutting them out.
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, State-Based Advocacy, Voting Rights & Elections
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