Voter Laws Need Reform, Groups Say

[Joanne98]

by Haider Rizvi
NEW YORK - One of her sons is serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq while another who has just turned 18 is about to join the Navy. Yet despite being a mother of two U.S. soldiers, Annette McWashington Pruitt cannot cast her ballot in the upcoming presidential polls because the laws in her home state of Alabama do not allow ex-felons to participate in elections.

Pruitt cannot exercise her right to vote because in 2003 she was convicted of receiving stolen property.

Come this November, like Pruitt, millions of U.S. citizens will not be allowed to vote in the presidential elections because they served time in jail for having committed certain crimes in the past. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), currently a patchwork of state felony disenfranchisement laws — albeit inconsistent from state to state — prevent a whopping 5.3 million citizens with a past felony conviction from voting.

A little over a week ago, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in Alabama challenging the election authorities’ decision to turn down Pruitt’s request for to register to vote. Lawyers associated with the nation’s largest civil rights group argue that the state election authorities had no right to reject Pruitt’s application because her conviction in 2003 for stolen property had never been considered a so-called disenfranchising offence by the state legislature.

Alabama state law allows a person convicted of a crime involving ‘moral turpitude’ to apply for voting rights restoration from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, but the applicant must have paid all fines, court fees, costs, and restitution associated with his or her sentence before becoming eligible to vote. Voting rights defenders say denying the right to vote based on one’s inability to pay these fees amounts to income-based discrimination.

‘There is no compelling or legitimate governmental interest in keeping a wealth-based voter registration system that is nothing more than a modern-day poll tax,’ said Olivia Turner, executive director of the ACLU in Alabama. ‘Everyone knows Alabama’s ugly voting rights history. It is disappointing that discrimination based on income, and completely arbitrary disenfranchisement, continues to permeate our voting system. These practices need to end.’

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/30/10698/