Home > Political Invisibles

Political Invisibles

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 31 May 2006
7 comments

Discriminations-Minorit. Democracy Prison Elections-Elected

by Sasha Abramsky

What does it mean when a democracy removes the vote from several million adults? How is the political process affected when certain groups — racial minorities and low-income whites, in particular — bear the brunt of this disenfranchisement?

These are not abstract questions intended to tax the minds of students in a poli-sci class. Rather, they are questions about a massive contraction of the franchise that is occurring, today, largely in the shadows, in the United States.

Let me explain. Over the past quarter century, the number of incarcerated Americans and those with felony records has more than quadrupled, largely because of the ways in which drug wars have played out. The African American portion of the prison population has skyrocketed — currently getting to the point where half of prisoners are black.

There are, in 2006, well over two million Americans living behind bars. If you pick up a felony, you automatically acquire a host of collateral handicaps. If it is a drug felony, you are ineligible for welfare and public housing in many states, you lose access to government loans, and depending on which state you happen to live in, you lose your political rights — your ability to vote and to sit on juries.

In many states, especially those in the old South, picking up a felony means that you can never vote again, unless you complete the extraordinarily cumbersome and time-consuming process of applying for clemency.

In Florida, where nearly three-quarters of a million residents are currently disenfranchised, people who have finished their prison, parole and probation sentences and who want to vote have to fill out pages of questions, provide an array of detailed personal information, and submit an application for clemency to the clemency board, which then makes recommendations to the governor.

Four times a year, the Florida governor convenes a panel to hear these applications. Those seeking a restoration of their voting rights have to travel to Tallahassee to petition the governor in person, a significant journey for a poor person from Miami who has to find travel money, hotel money and also the money to absorb income lost from days off work. While tens of thousands start this process, the governor only hears about 50 cases per session. As a result, far more people lose their vote each year than can possibly hope to regain it.

In Mississippi, the process is even more restrictive. To get their vote back, a Mississippi felon has to convince a member of the legislature to introduce a bill specifically re-enfranchising that individual; both houses of the legislature have to support the bill; and the governor has to sign it.

Not surprisingly, few people navigate these mazes successfully, and as a result, more than five percent of all adults and a quarter of adult, male African Americans in the South are legally prevented from voting by state authorities.

Anyone who pays any attention to politics knows that we’re a country divided. While the 2000 presidential election produced the freak outcome of an almost-exactly tied race, with the electoral college coming down to Florida and Florida coming down to a few hundred votes, we’re in a period where Republicans and Democrats are both able to rely on support from nearly half the eligible electorate, leaving a couple million votes on the margins to decide electoral outcomes.

With more and more low-income people now being funneled into the criminal justice system — the result of a recalibration of social priorities that has led America in recent decades to embrace a scale of incarceration not seen anywhere else on earth — more and more people are returning to society as political invisibles. They complete their sentences, and yet they remain without rights of political participation that most of us assume to be universal.

These political invisibles have a dramatic effect on election outcomes. I argue this point in my new book, "Conned," a political travelogue that, in the months leading up to the 2004 election, took me from Washington State across country to Florida. In "Conned" I detail how, while many of the voteless had too many other things to worry about to care about casting ballots come Election Day, many others were desperate to vote.

Lloyd Brown, in Virginia, had spent the better part of a decade trying to convince state election officials to let him vote again. First he’d encountered active resistance, then, when a new governor came in who wanted to re-enfranchise people, he found the elections department had lost his paperwork and he had to start the multi-year process again from scratch.

In Nashville, Tennessee, Jamaica S. spent five years trying to get re-enfranchised after losing her vote on an accessory charge that had only resulted in 15 months probation. Clinton Drake, a Vietnam veteran living in Alabama, had been permanently disenfranchised following a marijuana conviction. Victoria, in Washington State, had lost her voting rights after committing welfare fraud. All of these men and women told me how frustrated, ashamed, and humiliated they felt because they couldn’t vote.

Take an increasing number of poor people out of the process, and politics is increasingly becoming a game played by, and for, the affluent classes. Remove the voting power of the urban poor, for example, and issues of importance to inner-city America are unlikely to get much attention when politicians are busily stumping for votes come election time.

Since we presumably want ex-cons to rehabilitate themselves and become law-abiding stakeholders in the community, we should encourage, rather than prohibit, their political participation. By not doing so, society has given up on them. By not doing so, society is keeping them invisible.

==========

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and senior fellow at Demos, a New York-based policy institute. He is the author of the recently-published book "Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House. (The New Press, 2006).

Forum posts

  • Reinstating the vote for ex felons is a good step. But you are fooling yourself if you think that, "we are in a period where Republicans and Democrats are both able to rely on support from nearly half the eligible electorate, leaving a couple million votes on the margins to decide electoral outcomes." Millions upon millions of votes are miscounted, due to electronic voting with no verifable paper trail. WE ARE ALL POLITICAL INVISIBLES. We need to demand accountability from our congress to ensure a fair vote for those that are allowed at the polls. And we need to ensure that excons have reasonable access to clemency. To demand voter verified paper records in all 50 states visit this link http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=1

  • It is debatable whether vote rigging has been a mainstay of American politics since day 1, but it is a certainty now that the "democratic process" has been subverted and the millions of Americans who cast votes in elections might as well stay home. Rather than being the premier democracy in the world, the United States is ruled by an oligarchy dedicated to the maintenance and expansion of its power, not only here in the U.S. but all over the globe. Anyone who thinks that this ruling class would allow for free elections that could threaten their control ought to have his or her head examined. Americans are no longer "citizens." They are "subjects."

    • "It is enough that the people know there was an election.
      The people who cast the votes decide nothing.
      The people who count the votes decide everything".

      Joseph Stalin.

      The necons are in reality Trotskyites, who learned a lot from Stalinists, apparently.

    • Socialism is a political system where a small minority control the political and economical processes.

      Conservatism is a political system where a small minority control the political and economical processes.

      Both are open to extremes of behaviour. One fact the writer omits, and that is that 90+% of prison inmates are poor. However, elections change far less than large groups of people, such as trade unions and armies. In my humble opinion, given its` short history of slavery, bigotry and global warmongering, and now almost completely catamitically acquiescent to the demented whims of a sociopathic and religiously obsessed minority. (a.k.a. the NEOCONS), ordinary and decent secular americans are now beyond hoping for change at the ballot box.

    • They sure coned you....and the others in the 29% "I don’t want to know anything about my president and what he is really doing to my country" ignorant twits.

    • I still think there is hope for change through the will of the people, if enough of them can get behind a good idea and force the change. The constituion points out that the citizens are the last line of defense to protect the integrity of democracy. Yes we have failed to do so in the past, but things have never been so dire as now. There is so much negativity on this site, and really the powers that be only control the masses through our consent. They are not as all powerful as most people on this site tend to believe as long as we withhold our consent en masse. People are waking up to the truth, and it will reach a point where it will breakthrough into the mainstream as an evolutionary leap. It’s not only possible, it’s probable. But all the victims who think we have lost control need to be reminded that we can be the power to bring about the change.

  • yea, that is the reason why they incarserate so many people. It’s a modern day Jim Crow laws. next they will bring back slavery. or maybe they allready have. Don’t inmates earn .05 cents per hour? There you go hey slavery is alive and well. hahhahahahahaaha