SHOULD FELONS VOTE?

High Court May See This Issue Again

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear two cases concerning
whether convicted felons should be denied the right to vote. Although
the Supreme Court has absolute control over what cases it will take
and the rationale in these two cases might not have been especially
strong, this is an issue that is likely to surface again. There's a
case in Florida that the Supreme Court might just take when the
issue is ripe.

Felony disenfranchisement is the practice of barring convicted felons
from voting.

Some states impose this penalty for life, while others, such as North
Carolina, allow convicted felons to vote once they have served their
sentences, including parole, if any. Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware,
Maryland and New Mexico have recently changed their laws to eliminate
or soften the lifetime ban on voting.

Though it's not mentioned in the cases returned to lower courts
Monday, the fact that some 3.9 million people in the United States are
permanently barred from voting -- about a third of them
African-Americans -- due to a felony conviction is primarily the
result of the aggressive way the war on drugs has been prosecuted over
the last two decades.

The two cases the court decided not to hear -- one from Washington
state, the other from New York -- argued that since a disproportionate
number of African-Americans are convicted of felonies and thereby
barred from voting, the law has the effect of discriminating against
African-Americans.

While African-Americans make up 12.2 percent of the population and use
drugs at about the same rate as the rest of the population, they
account for 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59
percent of those convicted.

One can see an argument on either side, but we're inclined to think a
lifetime ban on voting by convicted felons is overkill. It imposes a
punishment that essentially tells people they are forever barred from
participating in the normal processes of governance, even if they have
served the prescribed sentence and "paid their debt to society," and
even if they have turned their lives around and become decent,
law-abiding citizens.

In many instances it is punishment that is unrelated to the original
crime. The question is whether a reform of this practice should be
done by applying the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- as amended in 1982
to bar practices that have the effect, even without the intention, of
discriminating by race -- or through state-by-state legislative
lobbying or popular initiatives.

We're inclined to prefer the political process to judicial fiat. But
the case working its way up from Florida -- in which plaintiffs will
argue that the original 1868 life-long disenfranchisement law was
enacted with the intention of preventing newly enfranchised black
people from voting -- could make the question moot.