FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHTS OF VOTERS BEHIND BARS

Exercising the Right to Vote Is Important Part of Prisoner
Rehabilitation, but Over 5 Million Convicted Felons Are Barred From Doing So.

A coalition of concerned citizens in Alabama is shaking up the GOP
with their goal of registering voters in the most unlikely of places
- -- state prisons. A voter registration drive led last week by Rev.
Kenny Glasgow, began registering prisoners to vote, a right
guaranteed under Alabama's State Constitution, so they could cast
absentee ballots.

The drive was originally embraced by Richard Allen, the commissioner
of corrections in Alabama, but it was stopped when he received a
letter on Thursday from the Alabama Republican Party opposing the
drive. Its chairman, Mike Hubbard, told Mr. Allen that the party
supports voter registration but not for prisoners, citing a need for
safeguards against possible voter fraud.

Rev. Glasgow challenged this statement and said, "Voter registration
drives are an essential part of our democracy. This action by the GOP
and the Department of Corrections smacks of voter intimidation. Our
focus isn't politics, its restoration. We're just doing what the
Bible says, visiting people in prison and ministering to them. The
chairman of the Republican Party and the chairman of the Democratic
Party can go into prisons with us and monitor the registration
process to make sure it's nonpartisan, if that's a concern."

In Alabama, nearly 250,000 people have been stripped of their right
to vote due to a felony conviction. But, in a 2006 court ruling which
was the result of a lawsuit by Ryan Haygood of the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund, a judge found that only those persons convicted of
felonies of "moral turpitude" lose their right to vote. The judge
found that certain felonies -- such as drug possession -- do not
constitute crimes of moral turpitude and, therefore, individuals
convicted of those crimes do not lose their voting rights, even
during incarceration.

Rev. Glasgow's organization, Alabama-based The Ordinary People's
Society (TOPS) and their national partner, the Drug Policy Alliance,
estimate that more than 50,000 people convicted in Alabama of
felonies falling outside the "moral turpitude" definition have been
wrongly denied their right to vote, or anyway believe they lost that
right due to a felony conviction.

While drug use is proportionally equal across all racial lines,
African Americans are incarcerated for drug crimes at much higher
rates than whites. Blacks make up only 26 percent of Alabama's
population but are nearly 60 percent of the prison population. And,
for every white person in an Alabama jail, there are about four black people.

"We've got to start restoring people's lives by providing treatment,
by restoring the right to vote," said Reverend Kenneth Glasgow, TOPS
executive director and state coordinator of their New Bottom Line
campaign. "When a person gets a felony conviction, they can lose more
than their voting rights; they can lose public assistance, public
housing and financial aid for school. The drug war has become a war
on people and we now spend more on incarceration than on treatment.
Why do we spend more on producing criminals than producing citizens?
We need a new bottom line."

The right to vote is an important part of the rehabilitation process
and should be given to those who have paid their debt to society. An
estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because
of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. A few
years ago, I was one of those Americans. I was on parole and could
not vote after serving 12 years of a 15-to-life sentence for a
nonviolent drug crime under New York's draconian Rockefeller Drug
Laws. After my release, I felt the pain of felony disenfranchisement
since it seemed I was being further punished for my crime. I was
elated when, after waiting for five years, I got off parole and was
able to cast my first vote. I felt I was fully welcomed back by
society as a citizen.

"Alabama state law makes it clear that people incarcerated for simple
drug possession never lose their right to vote, even while
incarcerated," said Glasgow. "The GOP and the Alabama Department of
Corrections cannot decide on their own which constituencies are going
to have access to the vote, and which will be barred from it. We live
in a democracy, after all."