Restoring ex-felon voting rights could overhaul the US political map, [naive or stupid] advocates say

Mic

President Donald Trump’s re-election bid in 2020 may very well hinge on whether people like Alabama pastor Kenneth Glasgow can vote.

Glasgow is the formerly incarcerated co-founder of the Ordinary People’s Society, whose group is now working with the American Civil Liberties Union in multiple states to restore voting rights to former inmates with felony records.

The reform leaders are hosting a Voter Rights Restoration training session on Saturday in Selma, Alabama, fewer than two months after Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill into law allowing many in the state with felony convictions to regain their right to vote if they meet certain guidelines.

Ex-felons convicted of treason or impeachment are excluded from the program. And those convicted of murder, rape or other felony sex crimes — including offenses related to pedophilia — face steep legal hurdles to get their rights back under the new law, according to the ACLU. So instead, the group is focusing on people who committed “more minor offenses” like theft, robbery, burglary and forgery, ACLU spokesperson Rebecca Seung-Bickley told Mic on Thursday.

“These are people who have served their time, completed their full sentence or have gone through probation or parole,” she said. “They’ve made a mistake and paid a price. They want to go back to work and be apart of their community again and part of that is voting.”