Right to Vote

[ls317]

The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, onetime criminal and founder of a ministry called The Ordinary People Society, spent years helping people with criminal records regain the right to vote in Alabama, where an estimated 250,000 people are prohibited from voting because of past criminal activity.

Then he discovered that many of them had never actually lost the right.

Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a “felony involving moral turpitude.” Those who have committed other felonies — like marijuana possession or drunken driving — can cast ballots even if they are still in prison, according to the state attorney general.

But it has been slow work cajoling public officials to enforce and publicize the law. Until Friday, the secretary of state’s Web site advised, incorrectly, that those with any kind of felony conviction could not register unless they had served their time and their right to vote had been restored by the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Because neither the Legislature nor the attorney general has offered a definitive list of crimes involving moral turpitude, there is no way of knowing how many inmates are eligible to vote. But state agencies generally agree that those convicted of drug possession — at least 3,000 of Alabama’s 29,000 prison inmates and thousands more on probation — are eligible. Most felons and former felons, however, assume that they have lost the right to vote.

“This is an issue that’s never come up before,” said Richard F. Allen, the commissioner of corrections. “I would think that if there were any latent feeling out there that they wanted to vote, they would have expressed it by now.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/us/02felons.html?ex=1362114000&en=899f39ff40832fde&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[Earth_First]

1. “This is an issue that’s never come up before,”

Bullshit it's never come up!

[angrycarpenter]

2. Dammit! Ala. is such a disgrace.

Every news story out of there is ignorant. Has there ever been a news story that has a Alabamian acting in a way that is a credit to the state.

I was born there and with G. Wallace and the ten commandments monument and a hundred other similar things I feel a continual sense of shame for a beautiful state with a lot of very nice people.

[varkam]

3. As a felon, I've got to say this sucks a lot more than I assumed it would.

Before I lost my right to vote, I always thought this was a bit silly and wouldn't really be that bad. Now that I've lost my right to vote...well...it has some unanticipated psychological effects. Laws like this, in essence, tell us felons that we're not wanted here. What we think is not important. We're essentially Americans without citizenship.

But on point, who gets to determine what are crimes of moral turpitude? :shrug: