Get Herald RSSA chance to make history doesn't come along every day. As students, we often look back with awe and inspiration at the student activists of the civil rights movement. We wonder when we will have the chance to fight for a cause so fundamentally just as winning the right to vote and equal treatment under the law. Well, here in Rhode Island, we have that chance.
Rhode Island is at the forefront of the struggle to end felon disfranchisement. Despite the recent renewal of the Voting Rights Act and a renewed interest in voting procedures due to the last two highly contested presidential elections, there are currently close to 5 million U. S. citizens who are still unable to participate in their democracy. Felon disfranchisement - the practice of systematically stripping the right to vote away from individuals convicted of a felony - leaves felons and former felons as the single largest group barred from voting in the United States.
Voting has never been conceived, in democracies, as a reserved privilege.
Prisoners maintain their right to vote in 18 countries across Europe, including Ireland, Spain, Switzerland and Poland. In South Africa, prisoners helped elect one of their own - Nelson Mandela. And last year the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that denying prisoners the vote is "anti-democratic" and "denies the basis of democratic legitimacy."
In the United States, disfranchisement laws affect large numbers of people, and they inevitably target some groups more than others, particularly people of color. Across the country, one out of every eight African-American men is barred from voting. In Florida and Alabama, it's one in three.
Some of us may think that in Rhode Island, this situation would be different. However, Rhode Island is the most restrictive state in New England, denying former felons on probation and parole the right to vote (Maine and Vermont, on the other hand, allow those in prison to vote). As a result, 15,000 Rhode Islanders are unable to participate in their democracy.
This law disproportionately affects members of Rhode Island's low-income black and Hispanic neighborhoods. For example, one in five black men in Rhode Island cannot vote. One in five. In sections of South Providence the rate of disfranchisement for black male between the ages of 18-34 is 40 percent. Entire communities are being silenced.
Despite these egregious racial disparities, the impact of this law is by no means limited to R.I.'s communities of color. The majority of people who cannot vote are white and they come from all over the state. Because of Rhode Island's often lengthy probation sentences, many are denied the right to vote for years and years. For example, if you serve four years on a drug charge, it is not uncommon to also receive a 20-year probation sentence. This means that if you get out when you're 22, you may not be voting until after you're 40. In states where the formerly incarcerated can vote, those who do vote are 50 percent less likely to recidivate (re-enter prison). The impact is felt beyond the individual, as children of disfranchised parents won't be represented either. They will grow up without having a model for how to participate in the democratic process.
However, as members of a democracy who do have the right to vote, we have the possibility to effect change: this November, there will be a ballot initiative - Question 2 - on which (most) Rhode Islanders will get to decide whether or not to restore the right to vote to former felons. If Question 2 passes, Rhode Island will restore the right to vote to all men and women who have served their time behind bars, and are back out in the community. Support for Question 2 transcends political party and ideology: endorsers include the League of Women Voters, the American Bar Association and R.I. Bar Association, Common Cause, the American Correctional Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council of Churches, the Urban League of R.I., Marriage Equality R.I., the AFL-CIO, and the American Friends Service Committee, among dozens of others.
This is our chance to make history. The proposed change in Rhode Island is part of a national trend in reexamining these laws; Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Iowa and Connecticut have all implemented similar changes in recent years. However, if Question 2 is approved, Rhode Island will become the first state to restore the vote through a popular vote.
Signed,
Andres Idarraga '08
Adam Roberts '07
Ariel Werner '09, Right to Vote Chair Gabriel Corens '06.5
Kristin Jordan '09
Stefan Lallinger '08
Neeta Pal '09
Robert Smith '09
Trevor Stutz '07
Daniel Schleifer '03.5
The Right to Vote coalition asks you to join them for their first recruitment meeting of the fall, this Sunday, September 10, at 9 p.m. in Wilson 102.
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