Conyers
Introduces
Legislation
to
End
Felony
Disenfranchisement
4/16/99
(report provided by Rudy Cypser of CURE-NY, a chapter of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants) Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a bill this week that would take the first step toward abolishing one of the last remaining restrictions enacted nearly 100 years ago to deny African Americans the right to vote: criminal disenfranchisement laws. Although the other tools of voter discrimination enacted after the Civil War -- poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests -- have long since been abolished, criminal disenfranchisement laws continue to be used as a means of denying African Americans access to the voting booth. Statistics show that blacks are five times as likely as whites to be disenfranchised under felony voter laws. In fact, a recent report by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch estimated that "in states that disenfranchise ex-felons, 40 percent of the next generation of black men is likely to lose permanently the right to vote." Currently 3.9 million Americans are disqualified from voting because of an inconsistent patchwork of state laws that disenfranchise citizens who have been convicted of a felony. Experts believe that in seven states one in four black men has permanently lost the right to vote. No other democratic nation indefinitely disenfranchises as many people because of felony convictions. The Conyers bill, H.R. 906, would guarantee that all citizens who have paid their debt to society and are no longer incarcerated regain the right to vote in federal elections, even if they are barred from voting in state elections. End arbitrary access to the voting booth! Contact your representative. Or, send a FREE FAX to your representative urging him or her to support H.R. 906 from the ACLU web site at http://www.aclu.org/action/vote106.html.
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