WE'RE A LONG WAY FROM REAL DEMOCRACY

Bad Laws and Manipulation Still Keep Many People, Especially Poor and
Minority, Out of the Voting Booth

As we celebrate the 86-year anniversary of the battle for women's
suffrage and passage of the 19th Amendment tomorrow, the call for a
genuine and just democracy remains ever-present in today's political
landscape. The United States has a long history of de jure and de
facto disenfranchisement that continues to erode our democracy.

From gerrymandered redistricting and antiquated voting machines, to
purging and suppression of voters through state-regulated photo IDs,
historically disfranchised communities continue to experience the
erosion of their political power, particularly in low-income
communities and communities of color.

Today, more than 23 million adult Americans live in poverty. According
to the U.S. Census, in 2004 only 59 percent of citizens in households
earning less than $15,000 per year were registered to vote, compared
with 85 percent in households earning more than $75,000. Low-income
people face several challenges to registering and voting, including
less flexible jobs and transportation problems, plus a lack of stable
housing, photo identification and user-friendly information on
candidates and voting procedures.

In 2004, more than 550 affordable-housing groups across the country
registered and mobilized thousands of underrepresented people. We were
a part of that effort, registering and mobilizing homeless people in
New York City who were unaware of their right to vote. In 1994,
homeless people in New York State residing in shelters, hotels or on
the street won the right to vote in the case known as Pitts v. Black.

Nearly one of every 20 New York City residents has utilized the
shelter system. About 90 percent of homeless New Yorkers are black or
Latino - even though 53 percent of New York City's total population is
black or Latino.

In speaking with and registering hundreds of homeless people, we were
told many stories of their being turned away at the polls because they
lived in shelters. Others voiced valid frustrations at not being able
to vote in the districts where they had lived all their lives and
where they planned on returning once they left temporary housing. Time
and time again, we encountered people who still believed they could
not vote because they had served time, even though they had not been
in prison or on parole for many years - some for more than 20 years.
Only those convicted of felonies and currently incarcerated or on
parole lose the right to vote.

Quickly, our work was inextricably linked to the fight to restore
citizens to voter rolls and the impact of large-scale incarceration
due to drug convictions. New York's 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws,
mandating harsh prison terms and incarcerating people (many of whom
had no prior records) for low-level, nonviolent offenses, rather than
utilizing drug treatment programs, have devastated communities. More
than 92 percent of all those convicted under these state laws are
people of color, most of whom come from New York City. The collateral
consequences are many - one of which is loss of the right to vote.

Meanwhile, federal "one-strike" legislation that can keep former
inmates with felony drug convictions from returning to publicly
subsidized housing, and places barriers on obtaining licenses and
employment, has created a cyclical and compounding impact on
communities of color and low-income communities in New York. The state
releases almost 30,000 prisoners each year. Most people on parole
return to their home communities - a large number to Harlem, the South
Bronx, central Brooklyn and Jamaica, neighborhoods that also have the
most families who reside in the city's homeless shelters.

Felon disenfranchisement laws in New York State not only dilute the
political and economic power of communities of color, they also add to
the political clout of upstate, largely white, communities. An
organization called the Prison Policy Initiative documented how, in
its redistricting process, the New York State Legislature utilized
U.S. Census numbers, counting urban prisoners incarcerated in rural
prisons as rural residents, creating a phantom population with no
representation. In New York, only 24 percent of prisoners are from
upstate, while 91 percent of prisoners are incarcerated there. This
practice not only reduces the electoral power and representation of
urban communities, which are the most negatively affected by
incarceration policies; it boosts the political power of rural
communities benefiting from the growth of the prison industry.

The celebrations and memories of historic victories such as women's
suffrage and the Voting Rights Act are critical today as we continue
to work for a genuine democracy that represents and speaks for all
people, including those who have been left out of the debate for
centuries. What we call for is a day where we find ourselves
celebrating not a patchwork of policies piecing together a broken
system, but a re-imagining, a visionary call of a people's democracy.