By Gilda R. Daniels, an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Daniels, a former deputy chief in the Voting Section of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, will moderate a panel discussion during ACS's Voting Rights Symposium Sept. 28 (details to be announced). 

I admit it. I am a Voting Rights Act baby. I was born 45 years ago and so was the Voting Rights Act. Just like me, the Voting Rights Act must adapt to and acknowledge a changing society, but we are far from over the hill and should not be discarded as a relic of the past. At the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, President Johnson called the passage of the VRA a "triumph for freedom" and linked the need for the VRA to the history of African Americans in America. After Bloody Sunday left the country in shock over man's inhumanity to man and countless efforts to secure equal voting rights through piecemeal litigation, then-Attorney General Katzenbach convinced Congress to pass and the President to sign the Voting Rights Act to serve as the vehicle that would tear down Jim Crow's barriers to the ballot, such as literacy tests and grandfather clauses. The Act was sorely needed. In March of 1965 in Alabama, only 19.3 percent of blacks were registered compared with 69.2 percent of whites, an almost 50 percent gap in registration rates. The most egregious state was Mississippi with a 63.2 percent gap between blacks and whites. Only 6.7 percent of its eligible Black voting age population was registered. (See "Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality.") Have we made advances? Absolutely. Have we reached the post-racial Promised Land where the VRA is no longer needed? No.

Recently, the VRA has come under attack. VRA opponents in Georgia and Alabama have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Act and particularly its Section 5 provisions which require certain jurisdictions, mainly southern states, to receive approval before making any changes to the voting scheme. Changes can include anything from moving a polling place across the street to a Congressional redistricting. Many jurisdictions consider Section 5 onerous and out of date in this "post racial" world. They eagerly point to the White House as an example of how we, as a nation, have overcome. They neglect to point out, however, that in that historic election, candidate Obama did not win any of the states in the Deep South, where blatant injustices forced the federal government to respond with the VRA and where racially polarized voting continues to exist.

Although electing an African American as President of the United States is no small feat given our country's racial history, many barriers remain and must be eliminated before this country can reach full electoral equality. It is the electoral process that needs to be free of new millennium methods of disenfranchisement, including such acts of voter deception and intimidation as mistakenly and maliciously advertising that "Republicans (whites) vote on Tuesday and Democrats (blacks) vote on Wednesday." These acts go unpunished and unprosecuted, yet they impact minority voters. Additionally, the vast disparities in felon disenfranchisement laws across the country strip the ability to vote from those who are no longer incarcerated and are attempting to become honorable citizens. Yet, they are denied the opportunity to vote because of past indiscretions. In some states, more than 30% of African American males are disenfranchised because of felon disenfranchisement laws.

Is this a different country than it was on the birth of the VRA in 1965? God, I sure hope so. Gains have certainly been made and are in no small part attributable to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. True, the registration gaps between blacks and whites are close to or have been eliminated in most Southern states. In 2005, this country had about 9,500 black elected officials - an incredible gain from the approximate 1,500 in 1970. While there has certainly been an increase in the number of minorities in the Congress, the Senate continues to have one or no African American Senators and currently, only one African American serves as governor. I submit we should not gauge the success of the VRA solely within the black/white binary. The language minority provisions have opened a whole new world of equal electoral opportunity to citizens who speak languages other than English. The VRA has provided equal access to all citizens. It ensures that no person can be denied an equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process, but the battle is not over.

After 45 years, the Voting Rights Act, just like me, is reaching its stride and realizing that it has to make some changes to adjust to this new world that we live in full of electronic voting machines, voter ID requirements and the like. It's also recognizing the need to adapt to changing electoral methods and provide equal access to a new generation of voters. It's not time for the gold watch and the rocking chair, but time to continue to ensure equal opportunity for all.

On the 45th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, President Barack Obama called the Act "an affirmation that although the arc of the moral universe may be long, it bends toward justice."

The chance for blacks to vote for Obama was itself was a major victory for blacks and the Voting Rights Act, writes Cord Jefferson for The Root, but "sadly, the good news ended there."

Criminal disenfranchisement remains a major barrier to voting, Jefferson writes, citing Human Rights Watch statistics that nearly a third of all black men in Alabama and Florida are permanently disenfranchised by past convictions.

"The issue of felon disenfranchisement turns the spotlight on some uncomfortable facts about who goes to prison in the United States, a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world," ACS board member Linda Greenhouse wrote in a column for The New York Times last month.

In her column, Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, highlighted an opportunity for the Obama administration to take leadership on the issue of felon disenfranchisement. The Supreme Court has asked the Office of the Solicitor General to take a position on whether laws that disenfranchise those in prison or on parole are a violation of the Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

States have imposed other requirements that "restrain the right to vote," including a photo ID requirement in Indiana, and a system that relies on outdated information to verify citizenship in Georgia, writes CNN contributor Donna Brazile. Adds Brazile:

Other states have enacted similar laws or have simply refused to comply with federal demands, perhaps betting that they are unlikely to face reprimand from an overburdened federal government. This year, an election administrator in Texas -- a state employee -- publicly mocked the Voting Rights Act's language minority protections, telling an audience that poll workers should simply speak in slow, broken English to Spanish-speaking voters. The administrator was fired.

In addition to state laws that have eroded the Act, the constitutionality of the core provision of the Act, Section 5, has been challenged in multiple lawsuits in recent months, writes Kristen Clarke in The Grio.

But, Clarke adds, "It is perhaps because of the success of the Voting Rights Act that the law has a target on its back."

"A few years ago, people could not vote simply because of the color of their skin," Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), who led the civil rights march now known as "Bloody Sunday," said during remarks in Florida recently. "With the passage and implementation of this Act we have witnessed a nonviolent revolution in America," he added in a statement commemorating the Act's anniversary.

On September 28, Congressman Lewis and historian Taylor Branch will discuss the Voting Rights Act during an ACS symposium in Washington, D.C. The symposium will include two panels of leading voting rights experts, who will discuss the Act in light of recent precedent and explore election administration issues in the 2010 mid-term. More details about the event will be announced at ACS's website.

The Massachusetts Senate passed a bill to adopt a National Popular Vote law, approved by the state's House of Representatives earlier this year.

If Gov. Deval Patrick signs the bill, Massachusetts will join five other states that have agreed to cast their electoral college votes for the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote, rather than the candidate who wins the state's vote, according to the Progressive States Network.

The agreement between the states, which now include Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland , New Jersey and Washington, will not go into effect until states with electoral votes totaling 270 adopt such laws. If the Massachusetts law goes into effect, the number of electoral votes amassed would be 73.

ACSblog reported last month that New York State is also close to adopting a National Popular Vote law. A June 21 editorial in The New York Times urged the New York Assembly to follow the lead of the state Senate and seize the "chance to withdraw from the archaic and unfair way the country picks its chief executives."

The Progressive States Network map (above) shows the progress made in other states.

Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator and constitutional law professor at American University, wrote a two-part analysis for ACSblog, available here and here, on the importance of the National Popular Vote movement.

"Why is the NPV plan spreading like political wildfire?" asks Raskin, who introduced the nation's first National Popular Vote bill to be signed into law.

The core reason is that it presents an irresistible proposition: that the person we elect president should be the one who collects the most votes. This is how we elect Governors, Mayors, Senators and Congresspeople, and it is how presidents are elected in most democratic nations that have presidents. On the other hand, the current electoral college regime can produce farcical upside-down results like the one we saw in 2000, a dismal turning point in American history, when the popular vote loser (by more than a half-million votes) tortured out a "victory" in the electoral college after the most dubious sequence of assaults on voting rights and political participation by state and federal actors like Katharine Harris and five Supreme Court justices.

There's an odd - and therefore probably not surprising - proclivity among some Tea Party members to bemoan the Constitution's 17th Amendment, and call for its repeal.

David Firestone, in an op-ed for The New York Times, notes for us that the 17th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1913 and provided "for the direct popular election" of U.S. senators. Before the amendment was adopted, state legislatures, "filled with men of property and stature," chose senators, Firestone writes.

Beyond some Tea Partiers, is there a groundswell of support for dumping the 17th Amendment and allowing state legislatures to select senators?

As Firestone notes, "A modern appreciation of democracy - not to mention a clear-eyed appraisal of today's dysfunctional state legislatures - should make the idea unthinkable. But many Tea Party members and their political candidates are thinking it anyway, convinced that returning to the pre-17th Amendment system would reduce the power of the federal government and enhance state rights."

Firestone concludes:

It may be true that appointed senators, accountable only to state legislators, would never approve of many useful federal mandates designed to put the national interest above local parochialism - including everything from the minimum wage to the new health care reform law.

Not enough Americans vote. But, fortunately, almost all like the idea that they can, a thoroughly modern sentiment that will confine this elitist notion to the fringes. That means Tea Partiers who are infuriated by the health care law and everything else now going on in Washington can no longer look to James Madison for a bailout. Their best remedy is the one they seem to spurn: a vote at the ballot box.

Most states and local governments are counting prisoners in creating election districts, maintains a report released today by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF).

In "Captive Constituents," the LDF notes that "most states and local governments count incarcerated persons as residents of the prison communities where they are housed when drawing election district lines, even though they are not residents of those communities and have no opportunity to build meaningful ties there."

"This practice is known as ‘prison-based gerrymandering,' and it distorts our democratic process by artificially inflating the population count - and thus, the political influence - of the districts where prisons and jails are located," said John Payton, LDF president and director-counsel, said in a press statement about the report."

The full report is available here.

The Supreme Court earlier this week asked the U.S. Solicitor General's Office to provide its thoughts on whether laws that prohibit felons from voting subvert the Voting Rights Act, The National Law Journal reports. The Court's order came in the case of Simmons v. Galvin, which involves a federal appeals court decision invalidating a Massachusetts constitutional amendment barring prisoners from voting. The legal newspaper maintains that after "years of expressing little interest," in the matter, the Supreme Court is seeking to put the "administration on the spot," regarding such laws. SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston reports that once the high court receives the administration's response, "for which there is no timetable, the Justices will decide whether to accept the case for review."

In a recent Issue Brief published by ACS, authors Deborah J. Vagins and Erika Wood explore the laws that bar individuals with criminal records from voting.

They maintain, "Many of these criminal disenfranchisement laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era, and were created with the purpose of barring African Americans from voting. The impact of these laws continues today. Nationwide, 13% of African American men have lost the right to vote as a result of a criminal conviction - a rate seven times the national average."

Vagins, legislative counsel for the Washington Legislative Office of the ACLU, and Wood, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, urge enactment of the federal Democracy Restoration Act "to restore voting rights to millions of American citizens in federal elections and to finally redress a centuries-old injustice."

Their Issue Brief is available here.

On Wednesday of last week, private citizens and a private organization in Kinston, North Carolina filed a complaint challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This case, LaRoque v. Holder, follows last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder (NAMUDNO), which raised questions about Section 5's constitutionality but ultimately avoided deciding the question.

Plaintiffs in LaRoque are also unlikely to secure a determination of Section 5's constitutionality, though for different reasons than in NAMUDNO. There are two barriers to the federal district court deciding the constitutional issue. The first is that plaintiffs probably don't meet the prudential requirements for standing. The second barrier - even more problematic for plaintiffs - is that they lack a private cause of action to challenge the statute's constitutionality. If the district court follows existing law, it is difficult to see how it can reach the constitutional issue.

Do Plaintiffs Have Standing?

LaRoque arises from a referendum in Kinston, a municipality located in Lenoir County, North Carolina, which is covered by Section 5. Up until now, Kinston has conducted partisan elections for mayor and city council. The referendum, approved by voters in November 2008, would switch from partisan to nonpartisan elections for these offices. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) objected to this change under Section 5, on the ground that the absence of party affiliation on the ballot would harm the ability of African American voters to elect their preferred candidates of choice.

The City of Kinston has not filed a district court action seeking judicial preclearance, as it's entitled to do under Section 5. Instead, the city council has apparently decided to accept DOJ's preclearance denial, voting not to take the matter to court. For this reason, the plaintiff isn't he entity directly subject to Section 5, as was the case in NAMUDNO. Instead, plaintiffs are "voters, prospective candidates, and proponents of citizen referenda," including the one they would like the city to implement (Complaint ¶ 1.)

The first problem with a federal court entertaining the case is standing. In order to have standing, plaintiffs must satisfy both the requirements of Article III and prudential requirements that the Supreme Court has imposed. Under Article III: "A plaintiff must allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief." Allen v. Wright (1984). It is possible that at least some of the Plaintiffs meet the three requirements encompassed by this standard: 1) an injury in fact, 2) causation, and 3) redressability.

Even assuming that the minimum requirements of Article III are satisfied, however, the LaRoque plaintiffs probably don't have standing. For a federal court to hear this case, they must also meet the separate prudential standing requirements, the judicially "self-imposed limits" on the exercise of federal jurisdiction. As a general rule, prudential standing bars the assertion of a right by a third party - i.e., by someone other than the rightsholder. As the Court put it in Elk Grove v. Newdow (2004), there's a "general prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights." To the extent there is a rightsholder in this case, it's not the private individuals and group that brought suit, but rather the City of Kinston.

There are exceptions to the general bar on a litigant asserting another person's legal rights, but it's doubtful that they apply here. The Court has allowed third-party standing, where there's a special relationship between the would-be plaintiff and the rightsholder, and where there's a genuine obstacle to the rightsholder asserting his or her own rights. A paradigmatic example of a special relationship is that between a doctor and a patient seeking contraception or an abortion, as in Singleton v. Wulff (1976). An example of a genuine obstacle to the rightsholder asserting his or her own rights is NAACP v. Alabama (1958), in which the NAACP asserted the associational rights of its members who, for good reason, wished to remain anonymous.

In LaRoque, there appears no be no special relationship or genuine obstacle to the rightsholder making the constitutional claim Plaintiffs seek to assert. While Plaintiffs supported the referendum and want the city to implement it, this probably isn't enough of a special relationship to overcome the general bar against third-party standing. Nor is there any genuine obstacle to the city asserting its own rights. The city is free to challenge the constitutionality of Section 5, if it chooses. There's no obstacle to the city asserting its rights - it's simply decided not to do so.

The fact that the city has apparently chosen not to sue provides an additional reason for denying prudential standing. In Elk Grove, the Court rejected third-part standing of a parent seeking to challenge the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, on the ground that the interests of the parent and child were "potentially in conflict." It was doubtful, in that case, that Mr. Newdow had legal authority to speak for his daughter. In this case, the interests of the city and would-be plaintiffs appear to be not just "potentially" but actually in conflict, given Kinston's decision not to challenge the preclearance denial or the constitutionality of Section 5. Accordingly, plaintiffs don't seem to have prudential standing.

Do Plaintiffs Have a Right of Action?

Prudential standing isn't the only problem in LaRoque. The second obstacle to the district court entertaining Plaintiffs' constitutional claims is that they have no private right of action. Plaintiffs are private citizens and a group suing a federal official, the U.S. Attorney General, for allegedly violating the U.S. Constitution. They cite no federal statute that gives them a right to sue, and I don't believe that one exists.

There's no federal statute that generally confers a right of action on plaintiffs claiming that a federal official has violated their constitutional rights. Section 1983 gives a right of action to those claiming that a state or local official has violated their constitutional rights, but § 1983 doesn't cover violations committed by federal officials.

Plaintiffs might assert that the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) allows them to challenge DOJ's preclearance decisions, but the Supreme Court closed off that avenue in Morris v. Gressette (1977). In that case, the Court held that Section 5 precluded private plaintiffs from obtaining judicial review of the Attorney General's preclearance decisions. It's true that Morris dealt with a decision by the Attorney General not to object - rather than a decision to make an objection, as in LaRoque. But it's hard to see why this should matter, for the purpose of APA reviewability, since Morris held that the preclearance scheme created by Congress precludes APA review.

In other contexts, the Supreme Court has implied a right of action on plaintiffs alleging a violation of their own constitutional rights. The leading case is Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971), an opinion by Justice Brennan that allowed a private plaintiff to bring a damages claim against federal agents who had allegedly conducted an unconstitutional search and arrest. In the decades since Bivens was decided, the Court has curtailed the availability of an implied right of action to challenge federal officials' violation of constitutional rights. It has created an exception where there is an "alternative existing process" for protecting the right at issue and declined to extend Bivens beyond its core of protection for individual constitutional rights. More broadly, the Court has increasingly viewed the judicial implication of rights of action - under Bivens and in other contexts - with suspicion. As Justice Scalia has put it, with his own inimitable flair: "Bivens is a relic of the heady days in which this Court assumed common-law powers to create causes of action." Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko (2001) (Scalia, J., concurring).

It's very hard to see how a right of action could be implied for the private plaintiffs in LaRoque. They can't plausibly claim that their constitutional rights have been violated. The claim instead is that Congress has acted in access of its delegated powers. If there is a "victim" of this alleged constitutional violation, it's Kinston and similarly situated state and local entities, by virtue of the unwarranted intrusion on their sovereignty. I can't think of a case in which a cause of action has been implied in favor of private individuals under similar circumstances.

Because there is no statute that expressly confers a right of action upon them, the LaRoque Plaintiffs must persuade the courts to create one. For the district court to do so would be a stretch, one that runs contrary to the direction in which the Supreme Court has moved in recent decades.

Should Plaintiffs Be Able to Sue?

To this point, I have been examining whether the LaRoque plaintiffs can sue based on existing law on standing and private rights of action. Many people - myself included - believe that the Supreme Court has been too restrictive in these lines of cases, failing to provide access to federal court in circumstances where it's warranted. Of course, Congress could certainly create a right of action for citizens like those in LaRoque, who wish to challenge a preclearance denial where the affected jurisdiction affected declines to do so (assuming there's no Article III bar). Alternatively, the Supreme Court could change the law to allow an implied right of action in this sort of case.

Even for those of us who support a broadening of private rights of action, it's questionable whether that's appropriate in this case. After all, Kinston residents who want to see the referendum implemented do have a remedy. They can go to the city council and ask it to revisit the decision not to seek judicial preclearance - or, alternatively, try to persuade the city to bail out of coverage. Failing that, citizens can try to persuade voters that the city council's decision was wrong and have councilmembers voted out of office.

Supporters of the referendum might counter that this course of action is unlikely, given that African Americans constitute a majority of Kinston's registered voters. Were whites consistently outvoted in city elections, this might be a reasonable argument for creating a right of action. But according to the DOJ's letter denying preclearance, blacks have actually been a minority of voters in most of the city's recent elections. If that's true, it's hard to see a good reason to change existing law, and allow private plaintiffs like those in LaRoque to sue, contrary to the wishes of the affected government entity.

The Supreme Court stated in NAMUDNO that it believes there to be serious questions about whether Section 5 is constitutional. There will surely be a case that provides a suitable vehicle for raising that issue again. In my view, LaRoque isn't that case.

Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia is erecting an additional obstacle for nonviolent felons seeking restoration of their voting rights. News broke over the weekend that McDonnell's office is replacing the one-page form previously filed by those seeking a return to suffrage with an essay explaining the circumstances of their conviction, the employment they have obtained post-incarceration, and other contributions to society. 

McDonnell's decision drew the ire of civil liberties organizations and African-American community leaders for the second time in a week. His previous gaffe was a celebratory declaration of "Confederate History Month." Under pressure from critics, he apologized for failing to mention slavery in the announcement, which he recognized as "an evil."

The Washington Post recorded reactions to McDonnell's latest decision to anger a host of community leaders, including members of the commonwealth's black caucus:

"It's another roadblock," Sen. Yvonne B. Miller (D-Norfolk), a member of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said when she was told of the change.

Miller has repeatedly introduced unsuccessful bills to allow nonviolent offenders to have their rights restored automatically. "This is designed to suppress the rights of poor people," she said.

The decision may underscore one of the arguments for resoting felons' voting rights, made in a recent Issue Brief by the ACLU's Deb Vagins and Erika Wood of the Brennan Center. In "The Democracy Restoration Act: Addressing a Centuries-Old Injustice," released by ACS, the authors write that national legislation to bring ex-convicts back into our democracy would replace a confusing and contradictory patchwork of state regulations. The authors also observe that laws restricting felons' voting rights are rooted in our country's history of racism and continue to disproportionately disenfranchise people of color.

"With their roots in the Jim Crow era, many of these laws were originally enacted as a way to prevent African Americans from exercising their newly-won rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments," Vagins and Wood write in an ACSblog post announcing their Issue Brief's release. "Their intended effects continue today. While 2.5% of the total U.S. voting age population is currently disfranchised, over 13% of African-American men are denied the right to vote on account of past criminal convictions -- this rate is seven times the national average."

[Image via Somewhat Frank.]

In our recent Issue Brief for the American Constitution Society, The Democracy Restoration Act: Addressing a Centuries-Old Injustice, we examine an ongoing and deeply problematic barrier to the fundamental right to vote for millions of Americans. Currently, 5.3 million American citizens are denied this right because of a criminal conviction in their past. Nearly 4 million of those who are disfranchised are out of prison, working, paying taxes, and raising families, yet they are without a political voice.

With their roots in the Jim Crow era, many of these laws were originally enacted as a way to prevent African Americans from exercising their newly-won rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Their intended effects continue today. While 2.5% of the total U.S. voting age population is currently disfranchised, over 13% of African-American men are denied the right to vote on account of past criminal convictions -- this rate is seven times the national average.

Although in the past decade there have been significant reforms of these laws in the states, there is a compelling need for a federal standard. Some states disfranchise persons on parole or probation while others permanently disfranchise some or all who have completed their sentences. Several states even deny voting rights to persons who have incurred legal financial obligations or have only been convicted of misdemeanors.

This patchwork of laws governing voter qualifications often leads to confusion among both election and criminal justice officials about who is eligible to vote. As a result, countless individuals with convictions who are eligible to vote have been misinformed that they cannot vote, making the number of Americans impacted by criminal disfranchisement even greater. As we discuss in our Issue Brief, a federal standard is the only way to prevent future instances of this de facto disfranchisement and to ensure that all qualified Americans are able exercise their right to vote.

On March 16, 2010, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties heard testimony from a broad group of experts, election officials, and advocates in support of such federal standard -- the Democracy Restoration Act (DRA). This legislation would restore voting rights in federal elections to the nearly 4 million Americans who have been released from prison; ensure that people on probation never lose their right to vote in federal elections; and notify people coming out of prison about their right to vote in federal elections. By establishing a federal standard for voter qualifications, the DRA would ensure that all citizens have a say in their communities, while at the same time, providing a bright line for government officials who provide voter registration information.

There has been incredible momentum behind reforming criminal disfranchisement laws in recent years. Law enforcement officials, members of the faith community, civil rights and legal organizations, and governors of both political parties have all advocated for the restoration of voting rights. Recently, The New York Times editorialized in favor of the DRA, writing that "it goes against one of democracy's most fundamental principles: that governments should rule with the consent of the governed."

However, without a national standard, the United States remains one of the only industrialized democracies where significant portions of its voting-age population are denied the ability to participate in civic life. International covenants and declarations recognize the right to vote as a fundamental human right and many countries' have determined that denying citizens with criminal convictions their fundamental rights is incompatible with the principle of equality in the protection of civil and political rights.

As we conclude in our Issue Brief, if passed, the Democracy Restoration Act would not just restore voting rights to millions of Americans; it would finally correct a centuries-old injustice.

[Image via Samuel Huron.]

Too many Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that disenfranchise individuals with criminal records, write the authors of a new ACS Issue Brief, who urge passage of pending federal legislation that would restore those voting rights.

Deborah J. Vagins, legislative counsel for the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Erika Wood, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, write that the vast majority of those with criminal convictions are now out of prison and living productive lives, but are still barred from participating in the electoral process. They note, in "The Democracy Restoration Act: Addressing A Centuries-Old Injustice," that 21 states have eased voting restrictions against ex-felons. But, they continue, that while those "reforms indicate a positive trend towards reforming felon disenfranchisement laws, the patchwork of varying state requirements across the country continues to cause widespread and persistent confusion among election officials, criminal justice professionals, and the public." 

The authors write:

By continuing to deny citizens the right to vote based on past criminal convictions, the government endorses a system that expects these citizens to contribute to the community, but denies them participation in our democracy. Not only is disfranchising millions of citizens undemocratic and discriminatory, it is counterproductive to the rehabilitation and reintegration into society of those released from prison. Moreover, losing the right to vote is not just the loss of a singular right; it means losing the ability to participate in a whole range of decisions affecting oneself, one's family, and one's community.

It's time, the authors assert, for Congress to act by passing the Democracy Restoration Act, in order to "restore voting rights to millions of American citizens in federal elections and to finally redress a centuries-old injustice."

Their Issue Brief is available here (pdf).

[image via webmacster87(flickr)]