VIRGINIA has a long history of denying its citizens the right to vote. Today, there are still more than 300,000 disenfranchised men and women in this state, whose entire adult population in the 2000 census was about 5.6 million. The reason that more than one in 20 Virginia adults are denied the right to vote is that they have been convicted of a felony. The consequences of this disenfranchisement are important and tragic.
Virginia, along with Kentucky, has the strictest laws in the country about restoring felons' civil rights. With a single felony conviction, a Virginian will lose his right to vote for the remainder of his life. While it is possible for felons to reapply for their rights, the governor has arbitrary control over whether to grant such requests with no possibility of appeal.
In contrast, most other states automatically restore at least a non-violent felon's right to vote after he has completed his period of incarceration, parole and probation, and in some cases a waiting period. Some states allow incarcerated convicts to vote. While there is a lot of variation across states and several other states have objectionable policies, Virginia and Kentucky are the worst.
Make no mistake there is a shameful racial element behind this exclusion. According to data from the Sentencing Project, which works on issues of fairness in the criminal justice system, of the over 300,000 felons in Virginia more than 200,000 are black. There were 1.4 million blacks, of all ages, in the 2000 census. This suggests that approximately one in five blacks cannot vote in this state. In 2008, that number should shock the conscience.
The disproportionate disenfranchisement of a specific community perverts Virginia's democratic process and could easily affect election results. As a people, we compromise our claim to democracy when large segments of the population lose their voice. Further, disenfranchising such large numbers of a particular community can reduce the faith of that whole community in the democratic process. That the disenfranchisement is consistent with the state's political traditions -- before 1965 black Virginians were denied the franchise through poll taxes and impossible "literacy" tests -- does not justify it.
Unfortunately, it is the Virginia constitution, rather than statute, which prohibits felons from voting. To pass an amendment that would end felon disenfranchisement requires a ballot measure that must first be approved by the State Legislature in two successive legislative sessions separated by a general election.
Another unfortunate reality is that this is a partisan issue. Republicans win a small proportion of the black vote and feel no urgency to rectify the injustice of mass disenfranchisement of a group of people who they think will vote for their opponents. Democrats are reluctant to raise this issue too loudly out of fear of being painted as soft on crime. And since felons are such an easy group to demonize, there is hardly a guarantee that a ballot measure would even pass. Republicans would surely try to use such a ballot measure for political gain.
I spoke to Sen. Yvonne Miller (D-Norfolk) who has been a major proponent of restoring the franchise to felons, and she saw the question as part of a much larger issue of tolerating injustice for poor citizens of all races. She pointed out the enormous costs of keeping people in jail and the unreasonableness of a government which fails to invest in educating its people and then bears the cost of incarcerating them. She also said that the issue of felon disenfranchisement is sticky and uncomfortable but that some legislators believed keeping the electorate small favors them.
Proponents of felon disenfranchisement argue that people who broke the social contract by committing a crime should not be able to vote. But we have a criminal justice system in this state badly tilted against poor people. In Virginia, people who can afford private representation are much more likely to plead charges down to misdemeanors. The poor, represented by one of the most poorly funded indigent defense systems in the country, can be convicted of felonies for similar crimes. In such a context, taking away someone's right to vote for his entire life based on a single conviction is completely unfair. Moreover, it helps no one when people who have committed crimes are told after they complete their sentences that they will never be full citizens with a stake in society.
It is a shame, but this is an issue where peoples' first reactions are often to affirm an unjust law since it is easy to think that felons must be bad people who don't deserve to vote. But crimes should be punished with sentences, not with perpetual democratic exile. If George W. Bush can snort cocaine and then be president, surely a poor man who smokes a crack pipe and can't afford a lawyer should not lose his civil rights forever.
Andrew Winerman's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at awinerman@cavalierdaily.com.
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