REPORT SAYS 1.4 MILLION BLACK MEN CAN'T VOTE

Nationwide, 1.4 million African-American men - 13 percent of all black men -
cannot vote because of their criminal records, according to a report
Thursday by Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project, two nonprofit
research and advocacy groups.

Every state except Maine, Massachusetts, Utah and Vermont denies prisoners
the right to vote. And 15 states bar former felons from voting even after
they have served their sentences; 10 of them impose lifetime
disenfranchisement on anyone convicted of a felony.

In Texas, voting rights are suspended for two years after a sentence is
completed.

In Alabama and Florida, nearly one out of every three black men is
permanently disenfranchised, and in Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Virginia,
Washington and Wyoming, the ratio is about one in four.

"The proportions in some black communities are so large now that we've
reached the point where this is an issue that can potentially affect some
elections," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project,
and co-author of the report.

Mr. Mauer said Texas has the second-highest number of people who cannot
vote - 610,000 adults, or 4.5 percent of its adult population, which is
twice the national average, the study says. Florida had the most, with
647,000.

Twenty percent of the black men in Texas cannot vote, the study says.

"I think it's a rather frightening situation that one in every five black
men are locked out of the voting process there," said Mr. Mauer. "It speaks
to the very substantial growth in the criminal justice system in Texas in
recent years."

Dallas black leaders said the study is just a quantified example of a
justice system that's been stacked against them for centuries.

"This is no surprise," said Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price,
when told about the study. "We are the only people who have been legislated
into existence - we weren't born. This is another way of legislating us out
of existence."

Local NAACP President Lee Alcorn said the study goes hand in hand with the
fact "that African Americans don't get justice in the justice system, and a
disproportionate number of African Americans are in there for minor
offenses."

Mr. Alcorn suggests legislators create a program to inform ex-convicts of
all races of their right to vote when they are eligible.

"There is no real effort made in Texas to inform people who have done their
time," he said. "The Democrats and Republicans could make a concerted effort
to inform those people who have done their time that they are eligible to
vote."

Across the country, 3.9 million men and women of all races are
disenfranchised, according to the report, the first state-by-state analysis
of criminal disenfranchisement. Of those, nearly 1.4 million are former
offenders who have completed their criminal sentences, another 1.4 million
are on probation or parole, and more than a million are in prison.

The report cautioned that all numbers should be considered estimates, since
necessary data at the state level were often incomplete or available only
for selected years.

The idea of depriving convicted criminals of their rights as citizens,
including the right to own property, to vote or seek redress in the courts,
dates to ancient Greece and Rome.

In theory, former offenders can regain the right to vote in states where
reinstatement is not automatic, usually by order of the governor or action
of the parole or pardons board.

But in practice, the report said, that rarely happens: In Virginia, for
example, where every felon loses the right to vote for life, and only the
governor can restore it, only 404 of the state's 200,000 ex-convicts have
had their voting rights restored in the last two years.

Checked-by: Don Beck