Push to restore felons' voting rights divides Virginia in racially tinged battle
By Gary Gately/Equal Voice News
August 19, 2016
RICHMOND – On a steamy early August afternoon outside Broomfield Christian Methodist Church along a desolate stretch of Jefferson Davis Highway in this former Confederate capital, William Irvin Banks Jr. recalled rejoicing when Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored his right to vote.
But Banks’ eyes suddenly turned downcast.?For in July, the Virginia Supreme Court stripped away his voting rights and those of about 200,000 other ex-felons, striking down the governor’s April executive order restoring voting rights to all ex-felons in the state who had completed their sentences, parole or probation.
The bearded 31-year-old, wearing a white T-shirt with the word “BOSS” in black letters, committed armed robbery in 2006 and served a two years for it.
Now he desperately wants to vote in the November presidential election.??
Banks just got a notice in the mail from state elections officials, though, saying his voter registration had been canceled under the court order.
“I was 21 when that robbery happened, and I’m 31 now,” Banks said, standing under a lone shade tree and spitting out his words rapid-fire. “So you mean to tell me what I did when I was 21, you’re still punishing me for what I did when I was 21?
"I mean, I want to rejoin society and be a productive person in society. I learned my lesson from my incarceration. If you’re willing to come back to society, be productive and do what you’re supposed to do in life, they should welcome you back with open arms. It would help keep us on a righteous path.”
Banks, a father of two children who said he’s looking for work after recently losing a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, considers jobs as the biggest issue in the 2016 presidential election, as well as in state and local races.
Banks, a father of two grown children who said he’s looking for work after recently losing a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, considers jobs the biggest issue in the 2016 presidential election, as well as in state and local races.
Virginia: At Center of U.S. Debate
State policies on ex-felon voting rights vary widely, from the most liberal, Maine and Vermont, which allow those incarcerated to cast ballots while in prison, to lifetime bans on ex-felons’ voting.
The recent trend in most states has been toward expanding ex-felons’ voting rights. Since 1996, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures:
In the past five years, conservative Republicans have pushed back, seeking to restrict ex-felons’ voting rights as governors and state lawmakers wage increasingly intense battles over re-enfranchisement.
Virginia’s contentious – and racially and politically charged fight – places the state at the crux of a national debate over restrictions on ex-offenders’ voting rights. Conservative Republican state legislators have led the opposition to Democrat McAuliffe’s order.
Nationwide, as in Virginia, ex-felon voting restrictions disproportionately affect African-Americans such as Banks. In recent years, grassroots advocates and ex-felons denied voting rights have been raising their voices, especially in Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida, in what has become a pressing civil rights issue for U.S. democracy.
?In Virginia, more than 1 in 5 African-Americans can’t vote because of a felony conviction. These disenfranchised Blacks comprise 45 percent of those who had been covered by McAuliffe’s order in a state where African-Americans make up less than 20 percent of the population, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based think tank.
McAuliffe said about 80 percent of Virginia ex-felons whose voting rights had been restored in April had been convicted of non-violent offenses.
“I believe in the power of second chances and in the dignity and worth of every human being,” McAuliffe said in April under a brilliant blue sky at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond, commemorating protests demanding school desegregation in the state.
“I am done wasting time arguing about the old Virginia way. We’ve got a new Virginia way now.”
Suppressing Black Voting Rights
When he announced the order to restore voting rights for ex-felons on the steps of the state Capitol on April 22, McAuliffe spoke of the state’s “long and sad history” of suppressing African-Americans’ voting rights. The 1901-02 Virginia constitution, McAuliffe noted, re-established poll taxes and literacy tests and vastly expanded the Civil War-era disenfranchisement of ex-felons to keep African-Americans from casting ballots.
?At the Virginia Constitutional Convention, where delegates adopted the ban on ex-felons voting, Delegate Carter Glass said, “This plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than five years, so that in no single county of the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”
Lynetta Thompson, president of the Richmond chapter of the NAACP, sees the GOP lawsuit that led to the state Supreme Court’s decision as a legacy of the state’s long, shameful history of racial bigotry.
Speaking of the GOP opposition to ex-felons’ voting, Thompson said: “It is racist, it is documented to be racist and its purpose is racist. It’s meant to keep Black folks from voting, to disenfranchise those voters. That goes back to the status imposed on them as slaves in the Commonwealth, so it would keep a certain power structure. This is a civil rights issue of our time.”
The April order, which McAuliffe has called among his proudest achievements since taking office in January 2014, immediately drew fierce criticism from conservatives in the Republican-controlled state General Assembly.?
They ascribed McAuliffe’s order to political motivations, pointing out that he is a longtime friend of and fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and suggesting he hoped the move would help her carry the state by granting voting rights to more African-Americans.
Since the mid-20th century, Blacks have overwhelming voted for Democrats. McAuliffe denies the GOP claim.
The GOP plaintiffs – two lawmakers and four other citizens – claimed McAuliffe’s order exceeded his state constitutional authority, and that argument ultimately prevailed in the court’s 4-3 conservative majority ruling.
One of the plaintiffs, Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell, said Monday that the General Assembly would scrutinize each order to restore ex-felons’ voting rights.
“McAuliffe has restored the rights of some odious criminals,” Howell said in a statement in response to a reporter's questions. “The people of Virginia deserve a full explanation of the policy, specifically why he is restoring rights to habitual offenders, those who have not yet paid back their victims, and the Commonwealth’s worst sex offenders.”
Howell and other Republicans said McAuliffe’s April order had restored voting rights to 132 sex offenders still in custody and to several convicted murderers on probation in other states.
Matthew Moran, a spokesman for Howell, called the court’s July 22 ruling vindication for the plaintiffs.
“The heart of this issue was a fundamental executive overreach by the governor, who purported to have powers that the constitution did not grant him,” Moran said.
?Asked if Howell believed a bid to win votes for Clinton underlied the governor’s order, Moran said: “I don’t think there’s anyone in Richmond who doubts that was the governor’s intention.”
Hitting the streets to seek out ex-felons
Far from the State Capitol building -- away from the endless politicking, the claims and counterclaims, the legalisms and politicos’ speeches??-- anger, frustration, confusion and despair pervade among many ex-felons here after the court’s decision.
“It’s just been heartbreaking and devastating; these people had their voting rights restored and then suddenly had them stripped away,” said Tram Nguyen, the co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, a progressive grassroots organization that led voter-registration efforts after McAuliffe’s order.
“People kept telling us how they felt they had been redeemed, that they had finally been given a voice, but now their voice has been taken away again.
“The court’s ruling,” Nguyen said, “reaffirms the Commonwealth’s Jim Crow past validates entrenched interests in the Virginia General Assembly bent on silencing a large swath of black Virginians in order to maximize their political power.”
Assadique Abdul-Rahman sees the ex-felons daily, as a canvasser for the New Virginia Majority, who fans out into housing projects, other low-income neighborhoods, under bridges, in parks where homeless people while away the summer days on benches until they can get back into shelters in the evening.
He identifies with them all: He is one of them.
Abdul-Rahman, 53, spent 17 years in prison for strong-armed robbery, assault and breaking and entering. In prison, he read voraciously – immersing himself in history and government and politics.
And immediately after the governor’s order, he registered himself, then took to the streets to register 500 others. When somebody suggested he contact the New Virginia Majority, he did, and the group hired him right away.
The tall, slender black man wearing khaki and a baseball cap, approaches people and has a way of putting them at ease with his gentle, self-effacing manner. He asks whether they’re registered to vote, then explains the governor’s order, before seguing into whether they’re affected by the order. He never comes right out and asks whether they’ve ever been convicted of a felony. He knows well the spots where ex-felons tend to hang out and has a knack for picking them out of a crowd.
He carries forms to take down names and Social Security numbers and promises to enter the information into a database follow up when he knows more about precisely how and when McAuliffe will begin restoring ex-felons’ voting rights one by one.
Abdul-Rahman minces no words when he talks about what’s at stake in the coming election:
“It’s all about where this country is going for the next generation or two – up to three new justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, keeping the national security apparatus out of the hands of the neo-cons, as they call themselves, the continuation, upgrade and expansion of affordable health care, jobs. There’s so many things that the conservatives want to roll back, and we cannot give them control.
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"If you don’t vote, you don’t count," he adds, "and you’re not a full citizen. And that’s it. For full citizenship, you must be able to vote.”
He agrees with McAuliffe, the NAACP of Virginia, the Virginia ACLU and numerous other black leaders that racism underlies the GOP opposition to the governor’s order.
“Racism is running deep in this country,” Abdul-Rahman said. “I thought a had a handle on how deep but I didn’t, not until now. This lawsuit demonstrates that.”
Abdul-Rahman?encounters Terrence McLaughlin waiting for a bus outside the busy?Richmond?bus terminal downtown.
McLaughlin, 58, who wears a uniform with a shirt emblazoned with “Cavalier Ink,” the?Richmond?company where he produces ink, said he never registered to vote after his 2005 felony conviction for child neglect and didn’t realize he would be eligible.
He spent a year in jail and served four years’ probation. But after learning the governor could restore his rights, he said he wants to cast his ballot to make his voice heard on issues like jobs, care for the elderly and treatment for drug addicts and mentally ill people.
“I’ve served my time,” he said. “Now, give me back my rights, so I can get my life together, because what you’re doing is, you’re holding people back. You’re making them feel like they’re not even human, like they’re animals, like they don’t count. You feel like nobody gives a rat’s ass about you. It’s supposed to be government by the people.”
Abdul-Rahman laments that he can’t provide more specifics on how restoration will work – or when.
Like others, he had good reason to believe it would happen rapidly.
A dream deferred
Four days after the Virginia Supreme Court ruling, McAuliffe vowed at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 25 to quickly restore voting rights for all 206,000 ex-felons disenfranchised by the ruling.
He said he would use an autopen to sign a re-enfranchisement order for each ex-felon, starting with the roughly 13,000 covered by his April order.
“Thirteen thousand folks have registered. Let me tell you this: By the end of this week I will have restored the rights of all 13,000!” McAuliffe said.
"And in two weeks, all 206,000 will have their rights back, folks!”
Both pledges drew standing ovations.
But McAuliffe’s administration has since backpedaled on that promise, and as of Friday, he had not signed a single order reinstating a felon’s voting rights since the court decision.
“Our timeframe is to restore these voting rights as expediently as possible, and the governor is committed to doing it as soon as possible, but I can’t put a timeframe on it right now,” Kelly Thomasson, secretary of the Commonwealth, said Thursday.
“We’re trying to carefully review the court order to ensure we comply with the court order. We want to make sure we’re reviewing the legal implications of this case so we don’t find ourselves right back up in court. We’re just asking for people patience right now and to know that the governor is committed to doing this and doing right by the citizens of Virginia.”
Thomasson said she couldn’t predict whether any ex-felons’ voting rights would be restored by the Oct. 17 deadline to register to vote.
“Like having the right to speak taken from you”
In Monroe Park, on the western edge of downtown, Todd Lee sat with a handful of other homeless men on a bench, where he has spent his days since recently losing his home to foreclosure.
Lee, 56, spent a year incarcerated for a felony cocaine possession conviction in 2014. Before his imprisonment, he said, he had voted in every election since he was 18.
“When the governor registered me in April, I was elated when I found out I could vote again,” said Lee, who spends his nights at a nearby homeless shelter run by CARITAS, which strives to help homeless people get off the street and on a path to stability.
“And now they telling me – and I know I have about 10 other friends who are my situation, who had their rights restored – that all of a sudden, the Supreme Court took my rights away, and I wanted to vote really bad,” Lee said.
He speaks passionately about the need to reduce unemployment, pump more money into education, stem homelessness, take better care of the elderly and end mass incarceration of African-Americans.
“Voting – that’s one of your human rights,” Lee said. “That’s the most important right – to vote. Not being able to vote, that’s like having the right to speak taken from you.”
Restoring Voting for Ex-Felons Is a Civil Rights Focus for 2016
By Gary Gately/Equal Voice New
Disenfranchising people for past criminal convictions has a long history. In ancient Greece and Rome, they had a name for stripping away people’s voting rights and other rights: “civil death.” English colonists brought ex-felon disenfranchisement to America.
Today, for 4.3 million American citizens who have left prison after doing time for a felony, freedom quickly becomes a relative term. They’re stripped of one of the most fundamental rights of being a citizen of a democracy:
The number of ex-felons disenfranchised has soared from 1.1 million in 1976, according to The Sentencing Project, based in Washington, D.C. Much of the increase stems from the explosive growth of mass incarceration in a country where 2.2 million people are imprisoned – five times the number four decades ago, largely as a result of the War on Drugs.
And as civil rights leaders, voting rights advocates and other critics of disenfranchisement laws hasten to point out, African-Americans bear the brunt of the voting bans: Nationwide, one in 13 African-Americans can’t vote because of a felony conviction, compared with one in 56 people who aren’t Black, The Sentencing Project says.
The consequences can be devastating in states with the most extreme ex-felon disenfranchisement laws. In Kentucky and Florida, for example, 18-year-olds convicted of a first-time drug offense who serve their sentences and even complete court-ordered treatment can’t vote for the rest of their lives without a pardon from the governor, which most do not receive.
“How many sentences do you have to serve?” said Tayna Fogle, who was imprisoned for nearly seven years for cocaine possession and writing bad checks in Lexington, Kentucky in 1991.
“I’m really ticked off. I’m a Black woman who did the most horrific time to pay my debts to society, and I’m just so sick of the way the system is set up to ensure we fail," Fogle said. There’s no way off this wheel. They want to put their foot on your neck so you can’t get in.”
Today, Fogle, a 56-year-old mother of two grown sons and grandmother of six children, traverses the state talking to organizations, classes, legislators and ex-felons as an advocate for Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots organization which has fought for 11 years to restore ex-felon voting rights.
“If you don’t want me to vote, then I shouldn’t have to pay taxes, or I pay taxes and I vote. Either I’m a citizen or I’m not a citizen,” Fogle said.
She said Kentucky’s ex-felon voting restrictions make her think of African-Americans once being mauled by dogs, blasted with water cannons, even lynched.
Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, said half of disenfranchised ex-felons live in the 12 states with the most stringent laws, which bar even those who have completed sentences, parole or probation from voting.
Mauer said opponents of restoring ex-felons’ voting rights, particularly conservative Republicans, argue re-enfranchising ex-felons could create a “criminal lobby” that would vote against the interests of law-abiding citizens.
But, he said: “We want people to have decent jobs, a place to live and a good peer network. Voting is an expression of your commitment to the community and makes you less likely to victimize your neighbor when you’re home from prison. I’d much rather have an ex-felon standing in line next to me to vote than standing on a corner looking to get into trouble.”
Like the ACLU, Mauer cites research showing restoring ex-felons’ voting rights reduces recidivism.
Fogle, the Kentucky grassroots advocate, said she’ll continue fighting for ex-felons’ voting rights.
“We former felons are clawing at the back to be able to vote,” she said. “We former felons are simply left out of the democratic process.”
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Voting Rights: A Look at the States
— Gary Gately