On Election Day it will not matter to some 4.7 million
Americans whether they are Republicans, Democrats, independents or
whether they have an opinion on anything at all. Under various state
laws, they are barred from voting because they have felony records.
This includes not just prison inmates (48 states), parolees (33 states)
and probationers (29 states) but also a large number of people -- one
third of the disenfranchised in all -- who are off parole and "free."
Minorities are hit particularly hard by these state laws: They deny 13
percent of African American men the vote. Many disenfranchisement laws
trace to the mid-1800s, when they were crafted to bar blacks with even
minor criminal records from polls. Today this poisonous legal lineage
tells not only in the South, which retains the most repressive
statutes, but in states such as New York, where ex-parolees
theoretically get their rights back but in reality encounter local
election officials who demand discharge papers that don't exist, give
misleading information and find other reasons to turn them away. [more ]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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