Cardinals in meetings ahead of the start of a secret conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis are scratching the hair under their red skull caps as they try to decide whether a cardinal convicted of embezzlement and fraud can join in the vote.
Their quandary concerns Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who in December 2023 was sentenced to 5-1/2 years in jail. He was the most senior Catholic Church official ever to stand trial before a Vatican criminal court.
Becciu has denied all wrongdoing and is appealing the court’s ruling. The Italian cardinal, who is free pending his appeal, confirmed in a conversation with Reuters on Thursday night that he felt he should be allowed into the conclave.
Category Archives: felon voting
“Nearly 2,600 incarcerated people voted in Colorado last year under new law”
It was a Sunday in late October 2024 when Jesus Rodriguez, then 29, voted for the first time.
He voted in person for the presidential and state races, but his polling place wasn’t at a church, school or community center – it was inside the Jefferson county jail in Colorado.
“It will be one of my top five experiences being able to vote,” Rodriguez said in a video the Jefferson county sheriff’s office shared on social media. “I guess one vote means everything, so I would say that it made me feel good to know that my opinion matters.”
The Jefferson county sheriff’s office said about 125 inmates voted in person on the same day as Rodriguez and that the temporary polling place was the result of a state mandate to expand voting access while in confinement.
“Virginia Democrats Advance a Measure to End Lifetime Voting Ban. Now It Gets Complicated.”
The latest at Bolts.
“Cruel and unusual? Supreme Court declines to review Mississippi voting ban for convicted felons”
The Supreme Court declined Monday to decide whether a permanent voting ban on people convicted of felonies in Mississippi is cruel and unusual punishment.
The court, in 2023, had also rejected a different challenge to the state’s voting restriction that was based on the fact it was drafted in 1890 as part of a racist effort to disenfranchise Black voters.
Mississippi is one of eleven states that don’t automatically restore voting rights after convicted felons finish their sentences.
Voting rights experts say Mississippi’s restrictions are among the harshest because the state bans voting by first-time offenders who commit non-violent felonies. And the process for restoring the right is onerous….
4th Circuit on felony disenfranchisement claims under Virginia Readmission Act
An interesting opinion from the 4th Circuit today, rejecting claims of state immunity in claims under the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870. The plaintiffs’ suit asserts that the federal statute prevents the Commonwealth from disenfranchising citizens for convictions other than the specific crimes that were felonies at common law at the time.
The decision didn’t address the merits, but this suit is one to watch.
“The Michigan Jail that Candidates Keep Visiting”
“‘A Year of Frustration’: How New Mexico Kept Denying People Voting Rights Despite Reform”
New at Bolts.
“Nebraska Supreme Court Orders Elections Officials to Let Thousands of Nebraskans with Felony Convictions Vote”
Release via email:
The Nebraska Supreme Court issued a ruling today that orders elections officials to let Nebraskans with past felony convictions vote.
The decision stems from a lawsuit challenging Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen’s directive ordering county elections officials to defy state law by refusing to register Nebraskans with past felony convictions.
The state’s highest court has weighed in, ordering Evnen and county officials to reverse course and follow the law. As a result, Nebraskans with felony convictions who have completed all terms of their sentence will be able to register to vote immediately so long as they are otherwise eligible.
Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Nebraska, and Faegre Drinker litigated the case to victory on behalf of individual Nebraskans seeking access to the ballot and Civic Nebraska, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.
For nearly 20 years, Nebraskans with past felony convictions had been able to register to vote and vote two years after completing all terms of their sentence, including probation and parole. This April, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of state senators ended the two-year waiting period.
Three months later — just two days before the latter law was set to go into effect — Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers issued an opinion arguing that only Nebraska’s Board of Pardons has the power to restore voting rights. Evnen then ordered county officials to stop letting Nebraskans with past felony convictions register to vote regardless of how much time had passed since they completed their sentence.
Today’s decision orders officials to immediately comply with Nebraska’s new voter restoration law.
Eligible Nebraskans with past felony convictions who have not yet registered must do so ahead of quickly approaching deadlines. Online registration is available through Oct. 18. The last day to register in person is Oct. 25.
Nebraskans with past felony convictions who are already registered do not need to take any additional steps before voting this November unless their name or address has changed.
However, voters are encouraged to double-check their registration status ahead of Election Day to ensure they remain on the rolls.
You can read the Court’s opinion, along with concurring and dissenting opinions, at this link.
“Nebraska Supreme Court weighs felon voting law: How it could affect 2024 election”
Elections and politics suddenly became more real to Aaron Pettes this summer when he learned that for the first time in his life he was eligible to vote.
The 44-year-old former felon in Omaha is one of an estimated 7,000 Nebraskans who would become immediately eligible to vote just in time for the 2024 presidential election under a law passed by the legislature this spring.
Pettes, who was sentenced to 17 years for bank robbery but got out two years early for good behavior, began researching the candidates, excited to study their policy positions and accomplishments before making a choice.
Then two days before the law took effect in July, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, a Republican, issued an opinion declaring unconstitutional under the state constitution not only the new law, but also the 2005 law it was based on. That earlier law had already restored the right to vote to more than 90,000 felons over the past 19 years. Secretary of State Bob Evnen, a Republican, soon followed with an order instructing county election officials to reject the registration of any voter with a felony in their past….
Now the Nebraska Supreme Court is weighing whether the state attorney general acted properly when he unilaterally declared that the two state laws were unconstitutional less than four months before Election Day. Advocates who have pushed to restore the vote for felons say they are worried that even if they win this disproportionately Black group of voters will not turn out this year out of fear of casting an illegal ballot….
In a 30-minute oral argument Wednesday, the seven members of the Nebraska Supreme Court asked why the attorney general didn’t bring his own suit questioning the constitutionality of the new law and quizzed attorneys on both sides about precedent, but didn’t send strong signals about leaning toward a particular ruling.
The court could choose to resolve just whether the attorney general and secretary of state followed the proper procedure in striking down the laws, or could also address whether the underlying laws are constitutional.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln assistant law professor Danielle Jefferis said she expects the court will address both in an attempt to avoid further confusion.
“Unless the court issues a clear, definitive ruling on the underlying constitutionality, I think we continue to live in a land of uncertainty, which is not good for the election,” she said.
The court prioritized hearing the case, and advocates hope that means a speedy decision as well, perhaps by mid to late September….
“Voting Rights for Nebraska Felons in Flux as Election Day Approaches”
When the Nebraska Legislature voted 38 to 6 this year to allow people convicted of felonies to cast a ballot immediately after completing their sentences, it was a moment of bipartisan unity.
That moment did not last.
Just before the measure was set to take effect last month, the state’s Republican attorney general, Mike Hilgers, issued a written opinion that the law was unconstitutional. He did not stop there. Mr. Hilgers added that a law on the books since 2005, allowing felons to vote two years after finishing their sentences, was also based on a flawed interpretation of the Nebraska Constitution.
In the weeks since, people convicted of crimes and election administrators have been caught in legal limbo. Had thousands of former criminals been wrongly allowed to vote for 19 years, as the attorney general argued, or were potential new voters being unfairly blocked from registering this year, as supporters of the new law claimed?
Hastily scheduled arguments held in front of the Nebraska Supreme Court on Wednesday are the best hope of settling those questions before Election Day, when Nebraska’s vote could carry special import because of the way the state splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district…..
“Court Accepts Request to Review Appeal of Crystal Mason Acquittal”
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has decided to reexamine the voting case of Fort Worth grandmother Crystal Mason that it had previously sent back to the Texas Second Court of Appeals to review. That lower court reversed Crystal Mason’s conviction in March 2024.
Mason, a Black mother of three, faces five years in prison for submitting a provisional ballot in 2016 that was never counted as a vote.
In April, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office announced that it had asked the state’s highest appeals court to overturn the recent decision. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today accepted the case for review, which means further briefing will occur before the court.
“While I am ready for this case to be over and for my acquittal to stand, I will continue to maintain my faith that justice will be done,” says Crystal Mason.
No, Trump Did Not Vote Illegally
This story is incorrect, for reasons Justin has explained:
Back in 2019, Donald Trump moved his permanent residence to Mar-a-Lago, which means he’s a Florida voter. (And cast ballots in Florida in 2020 – by mail for the presidential preference primary and state primary, and in person for the general election.)
Florida’s rules on disenfranchisement for convictions out of state apparently depend on the rules out of state. According to the Florida Department of State‘s website, other than convictions for murder or sexual offenses, “a felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted.”
Meanwhile, in New York, a 2021 law amended the state code to disenfranchise a person convicted of felony only “while he or she is incarcerated for such felony.” (emphasis added)
So if Donald Trump were convicted of a felony in New York, and if that conviction came with a sentence of incarceration, I’m quite confident that there would still be a vigorous appellate process — lasting many months at a minimum — before any incarceration began, and before his right to vote in Florida were put in jeopardy.
En Banc Fifth Circuit Upholds Mississippi Felony Disenfranchisement Law
AP:
Mississippi legislators, not the courts, must decide whether to change the state’s practice of stripping voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies, including nonviolent crimes such as forgery and timber theft, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The state’s original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who sued to challenge the list say authors of the Mississippi Constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.
A majority of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Supreme Court in 1974 reaffirmed constitutional law allowing states to disenfranchise felons….
In the ruling Thursday, dissenting judges wrote that the majority stretched the previous Supreme Court ruling “beyond all recognition.” The dissenting judges wrote that Mississippi’s practice of disenfranchising people who have completed their sentences is cruel and unusual.
You can find the opinion in Hopkins v. Watson here. Citing Richardson v. Ramirez, the majority advises plaintiffs to “[d]o the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens that the law should change” and go to the Mississippi legislature with their complaints.
Good luck on that.
Two Florida Voter Fraud Cases Live on after Appellate Reversals
Ronald Lee Miller, 59, and Terry Hubbard, 66, were two of the roughly 20 people targeted by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ election fraud office during a high-profile news conference in 2022….
[J]udges in Miami-Dade and Broward counties tossed the cases against Miller and Hubbard, ruling that the attorney general’s statewide prosecutors didn’t have jurisdiction to bring the charges.
The decisions prompted the Republican-led Legislature to change the state law clarifying that statewide prosecutors could handle the cases.
In Miller’s case Wednesday, two out of three judges ruled that he could be charged. In Hubbard’s case, two out of three judges ruled that the new law could be applied retroactively to bring charges against him.