civil death

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States.”

15th Amendment, Section 1. US Constitution

A striking 6.1 million Americans are prohibited from voting due to laws that disenfranchise citizens convicted of felony offenses. Felony disenfranchisement rates vary by state, as states institute a wide range of disenfranchisement policies. Only two states, Maine and Vermont, do not restrict the voting rights of anyone with a felony conviction, including those in prison. The 12 most extreme states restrict voting rights even after a person has served his or her prison sentence and is no longer on probation or parole a ban that enforces a form of civil death.

The Eighth Amendment succinctly prohibits ‘excessive sanctions,’ and demands that ‘punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to the offense’… States that continue to exclude all felons from voting permanently are outliers, both within the United States and in the world.

Felony disenfranchisement policies have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Black Americans of voting age are more than four times more likely to lose their voting rights than the rest of the adult population, with one of every 13 black adults disenfranchised nationally. As of 2016, in four states – Florida (21 percent), Kentucky (26 percent), Tennessee (21 percent), and Virginia (22 percent) – more than one in five black adults was disenfranchised. In total, 2.2 million black citizens Were banned from voting in 2016. the current scope of these policies is not only too significant to ignore – it is also too unjust to tolerate…And although well over a century has passed since post-Reconstruction states used these measures to strip African Americans of their most fundamental rights, the impact of felony disenfranchisement on modern communities of color remains both disproportionate and unacceptable.

based on a speech by Desmond Meade, executive director of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition

In 2018, a supermajority of Florida voters supported the passage of Amendment 4, removing the lifetime ban on voting for most people with past felony convictions. The following year, state legislators made restoration conditional on an individual’s payment of all restitution, fines, and fees, meaning only people who have paid all legal financial obligations have become eligible to vote. Of the 1.4 million people who stood to benefit from Amendment 4, over 750,000 cannot gain the right to vote because they have outstanding fines and fees. 80,000 returning citizens have asked for their rights to be restored in Florida. But so far the state has cleared only about 56/day. Only 26 people were granted rights restoration in all of 2019. In addition to Florida, three other states (Alabama, Arizona, and Tennessee) condition eligibility for the restoration of voting rights on the repayment of legal financial obligations. Tennessee requires that people be up to date on all child support payments in order to regain the right to vote.

Voting rights are under attack nationwide as states pass voter suppression laws. These laws lead to significant burdens for eligible voters trying to exercise their most fundamental constitutional right. Since 2008, states across the country have passed measures to make it harder for Americans—particularly black people, Native Americans, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities—to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls.