SHOULD EX-FELONS BE DISENFRANCHISED?

Should ex-felons who've completed their criminal sentences and paid their
debt to society be allowed to vote?

For some 200 years, various states have said "no" by enacting so-called
"civil death" laws, denying former criminals the right to re-enter the
democratic process.

Florida's civil death law had sensational impact this year. It kept so many
African-Americans away from the polls that the state, and thus the
presidency of the United States, were delivered to George W. Bush.

Blacks in Florida went for Al Gore by a 93 percent majority. But 400,000
black Floridians, or 31 percent of the state's black men, are
disenfranchised because of felony convictions, according to estimates by
the Washington-based Sentencing Project.

According to a different study -- this one by criminologists Christopher
Uggen of the University of Minnesota and Jeff Manza of Northwestern
University -- 13.8 percent of all Florida blacks are excluded from voting
by their felony records.

Workers for a Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) program focused on African-American
Floridians reported that time and again, members of black households they
contacted said they couldn't vote because of their criminal records.

Count as you will, civil death switched the Florida outcome.

And with a strong helping hand from the Florida secretary of state's
office, according to the on-line magazine, Salon, and several major
newspapers. The office hired "Choice Point," a firm with strong
conservative ties, to "cleanse" voter rolls. The company's list of alleged
ex-felons, circulated to county voting officials, was heavily weighted with
African-Americans. Later it turned out the list was unverified and
contained thousands of incorrect entries, imperiling legal registrants.

Civil death carries greater weight these days because of America's
astronomic (fivefold) rise of incarceration of the last 25 years -- the
fruit of politically motivated "tough on crime" federal and state statutes.

A major factor in the incarceration craze: the "war on drugs," championed
by Presidents Reagan and Bush -- and continued by Clinton -- and
vote-grabbing legislators coast to coast. Featuring radically more severe
enforcement in black communities than white, this war divides and
devastates millions of black families. In many poor black neighborhoods
today, time behind bars is the expected fate for young men.

Result: imprisonment is becoming a salient civil rights issue. Hundreds of
thousands of black youth are being disenfranchised before they have a
chance to cast a single ballot.

Al Gore, note black critics, refused to speak out on this issue, despite
entreaties from Jesse Jackson and others.

And, just as the disputed Tilden-Hayes presidential election of 1876 led to
a deal in which Reconstruction-era protections of Southern blacks were
terminated -- unleashing the Ku Klux Klan and decades of black exclusion
from the polls -- African-American leaders see ominous undercurrents in the
2000 presidential election.

Exaggerated fears?

Perhaps. But check Florida and see it their way:

Long lines at voting places. Thousands of people mysteriously removed from
voter lists or then challenged and turned away. Dysfunctional phones to
check registration discrepancies (rather than the wired-in laptops often
present in white or Cuban-American districts). Unreliable punch-card voting
machines. Less access to electronic voting systems that warn voters of
mismarked ballots.

Add to that the Bush campaign's immediate moves to prevent recounts of
undervotes and overvotes -- mostly in minority areas. A civil death law
defended, days before the election, by a Jeb Bush aide.

A Republican-controlled Legislature ready to certify Florida electors for
Bush, no matter what the count. And a U.S. Supreme Court, loaded with
Reagan and Bush the elder appointees, stopping recounts and deciding for
GWB on suspiciously murky grounds.

Some elements were likely accidental -- polling places unprepared for a
dramatic increase of black turnout, for example. But take the totality, put
yourself in the victim's seat, and then tell me you wouldn't worry.

In that light, Gov. Jeb Bush's newly named bipartisan task force to look
into and suggest changes in Florida's election system is positive news --
but only if it moves beyond such issues as replacing punch-card ballots to
basic system inequities.

Indeed, for a healthier democracy in Florida and elsewhere, a reform agenda
is clear: Fair and clear registration procedures; new electronic voting
systems; and then, abolition of all laws that prevent felons from voting
once they've finished their sentences.

Florida is one of nine states with lifetime prohibitions on felons voting.
Others are Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico,
Virginia, Wyoming (plus, in more limited form, Arizona, Maryland, Tennessee
and Washington).

All such laws need to go. Why? "It's totally indefensible to create a
permanent outlaw caste," says the ACLU's Voting Rights Project director,
Laughlin McDonald.

Just as vital, I'd say, we need to reintegrate ex-prisoners into our
communities. Some 97 percent of those imprisoned will come back. They need
counseling, jobs, a sense of being valued -- and the responsibility to
their fellow citizens that the very act of voting ought to symbolize.