Representation: Elections and Beyond

Chapter 3. Barriers to Voting in the Twenty-First Century

CHAPTER 3 Barriers to Voting in the Twenty-First Century Alexander Keyssar Crime and Punishment In the summer of 1997, a small group of inmates at Norfolk State Prison in Massachusetts formed a political action committee to influence public debate about criminal justice and social welfare issues. As had been true of inmates in the commonwealth since the American Revolution, the men in Norfolk were legal voters. An underlying goal of the political action group, according to one of its founders, Joe Labriola (a decorated Vietnam veteran serving a life sentence for murder), was “to make prisoners understand that we can make changes by using the vote.” Within days of its founding, the prisoners’ PAC drew fire from politicians as well as victims’ rights groups. Acting governor (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Paul Cellucci led the charge, declaring: “the idea of prisoners organizing politically is to me repugnant.” Cellucci and his allies in the state legislature then filed an amendment to the state constitution that would prohibit prisoners from voting. As required by law, the proposed amendment was submitted to two successive sessions of the state legislature (in 1998 and 2000), both of which endorsed it by large majorities. The final step in the amendment process was taken on November 7, 2000, when the state’s electorate voted on the measure. Despite opposition from leading newspapers and liberal organizations, it passed easily, winning almost twothirds of the votes cast. “The hammer sure came down in a way we didn’t 40 Alexander Keyssar expect,” concluded one of the original members of the PAC. For the first time in the state’s history, Massachusetts had amended its constitution to narrow the breadth of the franchise. Once the amendment took effect, Maine and Vermont became the only states in the nation that permitted inmates to cast ballots. This local episode—largely unnoticed by the national press—was a vivid demonstration of the nonlinear evolution of the right to vote: contrary to traditional accounts of unrelenting democratic progress, the franchise could contract as well as expand, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, the Massachusetts rollback in the rights of prisoners—similar to a step taken by Utah in 1998—ran counter to the predominant trend in felon disfranchisement law. During the final decades of the twentieth century , numerous states were loosening, rather than tightening, their restrictions , ending the automatic lifetime disfranchisement of convicted felons or adopting more flexible policies towards those on probation or parole. The impulse to press farther in this direction was strengthened by the attention brought to the issue in Florida in 2000. The Sunshine State, which disfranchised convicted felons for life, contained by far the largest number of persons (approximately 800,000) barred from voting because of their criminal records. (That number would grow in ensuing years. ) Partisan concerns aside, the figure was shocking to many Americans, particularly since it included hundreds of thousands of individuals who had completed serving their sentences (Manza and Uggen 2006: 192, 286). The issue of felon disfranchisement was also gaining visibility because of the extraordinary growth in the size of the nation’s prison population. Between 1972 and 2003, the number of persons in prison or jail increased tenfold, from 200,000 to more than two million; the number of parolees and probationers rose almost as fast. Although crime rates did not rise significantly during this period, arrest and conviction rates did, and those convicted tended to serve longer sentences—giving the United States by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. What this meant, of course, was that the number of persons potentially subject to felon disfranchisement laws was soaring: in 2000, according to the most widely credited estimate, the nation contained 4.7 million persons who were disfranchised because of their criminal records. The figures for African Americans (and especially African American males) were even more dramatic and disturbing. Almost half the prison and parole populations were African American; more than 20 percent of African American men born between 1965 and 1969 had prison rec- Barriers to Voting in the Twenty-First Century 41 ords. In some states more than 15 percent of adult African American men were disfranchised (Manza and Uggen 2006: 69–76, 95–102, 251–53). Campaigns to promote reform were vigorously pushed forward in different states by voting rights, civil rights, and prisoners’ rights organizations , including the American Civil Liberties Union...