Nearly 5 million American adults, or 2.3 percent of the national electorate, are barred from voting because they have a felony conviction. In Maryland the rates are even higher -- 3.6 percent of Maryland citizens cannot vote because of a felony on their record. That translates to about 200,000 people who have completed their sentences behind bars but continue to be punished. Laws that ban citizens with felony convictions from participating in democracy go back to the days of Jim Crow, and the legacy of these racially discriminatory roots haunts us still -- 8.1 percent of African Americans in Maryland cannot vote, more than four times the national average for African Americans. We can't talk about felon disenfranchisement without talking about the failed war on drugs, the primary cause of escalating arrest and incarceration rates, especially in poor communities of color. According to Human Rights Watch, drug use is approximately equal across racial categories, yet African Americans are far more likely to serve jail time for drug crimes than whites arrested for the same crimes. In Maryland, nine out of 10 people locked up on drug offenses are African American.