Lexington Herald-Leader: In his inaugural address, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he will file an executive order this week restoring the voting rights of many convicted felons who are currently disenfranchised under state law.“My faith teaches me to treat others … Continue reading
Category Archives: felon voting
Daniel Nichanian for the Appeal: Hawley’s reaction reflects a system that has set them up as gatekeepers of voting rights, with the punitive expectation that effective law enforcement means cutting people off from the world. But in Maine and Vermont, law … Continue reading
AP: When the U.S. Census Bureau counts residents of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods next year, a significant portion of their population will be missing: prisoners.For these predominantly black areas, with incarceration rates among the highest in the nation, the government’s longstanding … Continue reading
Miami Herald: The Florida Legislature’s bill cracking down on Amendment 4 has created a mess, with felons uncertain whether they can vote, clerks of court unable to confirm whether felons are eligible to vote and election supervisors using voter registration forms that … Continue reading
Reuters: Clifford Tyson wants to help choose America’s next president. But the Florida resident fears his vote might return him to jail.Tyson, 63, owes court-ordered fines and fees for three felony convictions, one for robbery, two for theft, all decades … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian: Hundreds of thousands of citizens are barred from voting in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Virginia’s elections this November. And whether they get to participate in future elections will be perversely decided by those who are already allowed to vote.The … Continue reading
Opinion. … Continue reading
WLRN reports. … Continue reading
AP: Florida’s high court waded into the legal wrangling over the voting rights of felons, agreeing Thursday to examine whether the state can continue restricting voting privileges to felons who have unpaid fines and fees.Voters last year overwhelmingly approved a … Continue reading
Release: Today, Common Cause released a new report on the impact of denying voting rights to people with past felony convictions and what must be done to strengthen their voting rights. “Zero Disenfranchisement: The Movement to Restore Voting Rights” documents … Continue reading
Tampa Bay Times: Lawyers representing opposite sides in a federal lawsuit about felons’ voting rights can’t agree on how quickly a judge should decide the issue, potentially affecting whether hundreds of thousands of Floridians will be able to participate in … Continue reading
NYT Editorial: As the lawmakers surely knew when they wrote the law, they would be re-disenfranchising a large number of people who just had their rights restored. Only about one in five Floridians with criminal records have fully paid their … Continue reading
Order granting summary judgment in part to the state here. (Via Sam Levine.) … Continue reading
Release: The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law filed a motion for preliminary injunction to block Senate Bill (“SB”) 7066, a bill signed by Gov. … Continue reading
WaPo: Florida judges and prosecutors are working with felons and public defenders to find ways to register former inmates to vote, a process approved by voters last year that Republican legislators have made more difficult.To work around a law passed this … Continue reading
The Appeal reports. … Continue reading
A spotlight on Miami, following up on the more general effort I’d flagged by prosecutors to fight back against the Florida legislature’s fines-and-fees limitations on the Amendment 4 initiative restoring the vote to those with convictions. … Continue reading
Herman Schwartz blogs at Balkinization on the legislative cutbacks to Florida’s Amendment 4 for people with convictions who still owe fines or fees. And The Intercept has a piece on some prosecutors’ attempts to reduce the fines and fees, in … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian for The Appeal. … Continue reading
Well this shows a judge who is ready to do something. This is a consolidated action in which Plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of portions of S.B. 7066. While no motions have been filed, Plaintiffs seek a temporary, preliminary, and permanent … Continue reading
NYT: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law on Friday significant restrictions to the recently restored voting rights of people with felony convictions, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the state hours later.The new law requires people … Continue reading
From the Governor’s signing statement (via Steve Bosquet) issued late on a Friday afternoon: I am sure the lawsuits will be filed almost immediately. … Continue reading
Bloomberg: Seven months ago, almost two-thirds of voters approved Amendment 4, which restores registration rights to many felons. Florida had been one of three states, along with Kentucky and Iowa, where those convicted of a felony were permanently prohibited from … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian for The Appeal: Colorado and Nevada adopted new laws this week that will restore people’s voting rights as soon as they are released from incarceration, as opposed to doing so at later stages of the legal system (if … Continue reading
Release: Yesterday, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signed a bill into law ensuring that people in state prisons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new legislative districts are drawn. The new law makes Nevada the sixth state to end … Continue reading
AP: Brown and tens of thousands of other Georgia residents are cut off from voting due to a vaguely worded law that state election officials interpret in the strictest possible manner.Georgia strips voting rights from people convicted of all felonies, … Continue reading
Tampa Bay Times: Amendment 4 led to 99 times as many formerly-incarcerated Floridians registering to vote as normal, and those new voters are more likely to be black and residents of lower-income neighborhoods than the rest of the electorate, according … Continue reading
Katrina vanden Heuvel WaPo column. … Continue reading
CBS Miami: Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he will sign a controversial measure that would require repayment of financial obligations before felons’ voting rights are restored.“I’ll sign it,” DeSantis said while at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine … Continue reading
538: In a March 2018 poll for HuffPost, YouGov found that 24 percent of U.S. adults supported restoring felons’ voting rights while they are in prison and 58 percent opposed it, including 41 percent who were “strongly” opposed….But the public is … Continue reading
Politico: The debate over allowing the Boston Marathon bomber to vote started with a man named Rick in Muscatine, Iowa.At a town hall in early April, he reminded Bernie Sanders that prisoners in his home state of Vermont are allowed … Continue reading
Miami Herald: Florida lawmakers say they’ve settled on a way to implement Amendment 4 that requires felons to pay all court fees, fines and restitution before voting, but allows judges to waive those costs or convert them into community service … Continue reading
Ariel White for the APSR. Here is the abstract: This paper presents new causal estimates of incarceration’s effect on voting, using administrative data on criminal sentencing and voter turnout. I use the random case assignment process of a major county … Continue reading
NYT: The question was stark: Would you support enfranchising incarcerated people like the Boston Marathon bomber or convicted rapists?The answer Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont gave was starker: Yes.“I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy,” Mr. Sanders … Continue reading
Michael Morse oped: The Republican-dominated Legislature has tried to hang Amendment 4 by its own advocate’s words. When the campaign went before the state supreme court to qualify for the ballot, it explained to the seven justices that “completion of sentence” meant … Continue reading
AP reports. … Continue reading
Politifact Florida. … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian: The success of Amendment 4, Florida’s 2018 initiative to expand voting rights, may have boosted efforts to reform felony disenfranchisement nationwide. But Mississippi’s Republican lawmakers were ultimately unmoved. The last of the rights restoration billsthat was still standing in Mississippi’s … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
NBC News reports. … Continue reading
Orlando Sentinel: A bill to be considered Tuesday in a Florida House committee would create new obstacles to restoring ex-felons’ voting rights mandated by Amendment 4, activists said Monday.The House Criminal Justice Committee’s bill is the culmination of months of arguments about … Continue reading
Sam Levine with followup on some of the North Carolina federal prosecutions of noncitizen voting. And earlier, with a contrast of Crystal Mason’s sentence for casting a ballot while on supervised release and Paul Manafort’s sentence for tax and bank … Continue reading
Final vote: 234-193. UPDATE: The text of the whole thing [will be] here. (As of 7:30pm ET on 3/8/19, the only text appears to be from an earlier version: the version actually considered is a combination of this, this, and … Continue reading
An AP piece on the administrative hurdles of rights restoration, and the consequences for those who may not know that they’re voting while ineligible. The cover photo of the lead subject of the story may challenge a lot of preconceptions. … Continue reading
NOLA.com: Kenneth Johnston has never participated in an election before, but he’s hoping by the time he arrives at his 70th birthday Saturday (March 2), he’ll be registered to vote for the first time in his life.Johnston, who is jokingly … Continue reading
USLW: Mississippi convicted felons won class status Feb. 13 in their suit to have their voting rights restored.The state’s argument that class certification lacks utility has “practical appeal, but it finds no foothold in Rule 23’s text,” Judge Daniel P. … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian for The Appeal. … Continue reading
Tampa Bay Times: That’s when voters approved Amendment 4, a ballot measure that restored the right to vote to most people who had served out sentences for felony convictions. What would 1.2 million potential new voters mean to perhaps the … Continue reading
Star-Tribune: Minnesota is one of 22 states where felons cannot vote until they complete post-incarceration supervision, such as probation or parole. Brown-Goodell’s is the latest in a growing chorus of voices leading a renewed charge to change that, a move … Continue reading