Let them vote!

Robert Legge
Published: July 3, 2008

Restrictions on black citizens’ access to the ballot box was official strategy throughout the post-Reconstruction South.

Paramilitary groups openly used intimidation and assassination as a campaign of fear. Other tactics included poll taxes, literacy tests, “grandfather” clauses, arcane residency requirements, inconsistent registrar’s hours and laws prohibiting ex-felons from voting.

Thankfully, all of these strategies are distant memories from the Jim Crow era ... except the last one.

Most states except Kentucky and Virginia have provisions automatically restoring ex-felon’s voting rights. Virginia requires a three- or five-year waiting period after a person has completed his or her sentence and probation before application can be made for restoration.

The process normally takes six months. Usually only about 1,000 per year out of 300,000 ex-felons get their voting rights restored.

Gov. Tim Kaine recently announced that his office will try to expedite the process so that anyone who applies for restoration before Aug. 1 should be able to get their application processed in time for them to vote in the fall election. Still, the applications are few.

Republicans howled that Kaine had political motivations since a majority of ex-felons are black, who in recent history have mostly voted for Democratic Party candidates. “I don’t know a lot of young Republicans who end up being felons,” said Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah.

Gilbert’s partisanship is disgraceful. First, only a few thousand ex-felons may get their rights restored this year. In the last presidential contest, the Republican candidate won by more than 262,000 votes.

Many would say, “These people broke the law. Why should they have any say in electing those who create the laws?”

Remember that these laws were not developed out of some law-and-order effort. They were part of a scheme to keep black and low-income people out of the political process. And for a long time the number of ex-felons were small. But as the number of crimes that carry a felony charge has risen, the inmate population has grown seven-fold since 1974.

Only a few are rapists and murderers. Writing a bad check or stealing a skateboard now is enough to permanently lose one’s voting rights in Virginia. In 1970, the threshold for felony theft was $200. Today it is still $200, even though that’s worth but a fifth of what is was in 1970.

Nationwide, the number of citizens who are barred from voting is near 5 million, more than all the registered voters in Virginia.

In Florida, a state with a recent history of close elections, the Republican governor has agreed to allow more than 100,000 non-violent ex-felons to have automatic restoration of their voting rights.

Maine, a state with two Republican senators, even allows incarcerated felons to vote by absentee ballot.

A 1982 Voting Rights Act amendment that bars voting laws that have a discriminatory impact on minority voting strength still seems to have gone unnoticed by the courts.

But discounting any political considerations, virtually all felons are eventually released. There is a strong public safety incentive to reintegrate them back into lawful society.

There is good evidence to tie participation in the voting process to a desistance from crime, even among those who have been previously arrested. While casting one vote is unlikely to turn a person’s life around, the act of voting manifests the desire to be a law-abiding stakeholder in a larger society.

Rather than keeping ex-felons on the fringes of society, we should be making registering to vote and voting a condition of parole.

Unfortunately, as long as the perception exists that they will vote in large numbers for Democrats, Republicans will selfishly oppose any change. And most Democrats, fearful of the “soft on crime” label, shamefully roll over when it comes up in the General Assembly. Hopefully some of our politicians will study this issue more carefully and reject Jim Crow and enact policies that encourage ex-felons to become a participant in a lawful society.

I’ve never found revenge very satisfying. But that is what meting out a lifetime punishment amounts to. 

Robert Legge is an independent columnist and resident of Madison County. His column appears every other Thursday. E-mail