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Speaking at Boston’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Monday, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law Lani Guinier called for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing all United States citizens, including convicted felons, the right to vote. Guinier, who specializes in voting rights law and teaches at Harvard Law School (HLS), joined other prominent political and religious leaders from Massachusetts to commemorate King and to examine present challenges to equality. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., also addressed the crowd of nearly 2,000, offering strong remarks about President Bush and the 2004 election. In her keynote address, Guinier condemned state laws that disenfranchise felons. “Many Americans [who] have repaid their debt to society cannot vote,” she said. “It is the states who determine that to vote is a privilege and not a right.” She also expressed concerns about progressive legal rulings of the Civil Rights Movement that stipulate equal protection under the law, but are not explicitly included in the text of the Constitution. “The U.S. Supreme Court can give with one hand and take with the other,” she said. To correct for these discrepancies, Guinier endorsed a constitutional amendment to provide a federally granted right to vote to all U.S. citizens. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., D.-Ill., is presently advocating such an amendment in the House of Representatives. Guinier also noted that a disproportionate number of incarcerated Americans are black and Latino and that many felons who are denied the right to vote are nonviolent drug offenders. According to Guinier, criminal records currently prevent 13 percent of African-American men from voting. [more]

Two Million Black Americans Are Still Not Free at Last. The disproportionate racial impact of these laws is staggering. 1.8 million disenfranchised individuals are Black, according to the Sentencing Project, based on a figure from 2002. It is safe to say there are approximately 2 million disenfranchised Black Americans as of 2005. Approximately 13% of all adult Black men are disenfranchised in the U.S. Black males are 7 times more likely to be disenfranchised than any other demographic group. In Alabama and Florida, 31% of all Black men are permanently disenfranchised. [more]