Texas: Bill Notifying Formerly Incarcerated Individuals of Restored Voting Status Vetoed

Republican Governor Rick Perry this week vetoed bipartisan legislation notifying individuals when they become eligible to vote and sending them a voter registration card, according to a Pegasus News editorial. Perry's reasoning behind the veto was that high school students are not notified of their eligibility; he added that it wasn't the mission of the state's Department of Criminal Justice to send voter registration applications. Debating that stance, the publication responded that high school students do, in fact, receive voter registration applications in government classes, in addition to receiving them when applying for driver's licenses. "The state took away the right to vote for felons, so it's not unreasonable to expect the state to give notice when the right is restored."

International: Request for Hearing before Inter-American Commission

The Sentencing Project and the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University's Washington College of Law have issued a report, Barriers to Democracy, that requests a hearing on the issue of felony disenfranchisement before the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights. The report examines the practice of felony disenfranchisement in the United States and the nations of the Americas, and finds that the U.S. is far out of line with evolving international norms in this regard. The report concludes that "the time is long overdue for the United States to follow the lead of its hemispheric neighbors and the broader international community, uphold treaties to which the United States is obligated, and take steps toward universal suffrage by reforming its criminal disenfranchisement policies."

The request for a hearing has been endorsed by a broad range of civil rights and human rights organizations and individual leaders. These include NAACP Chair Julian Bond, American Bar Association, ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and many others.
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