Legislature may address felony voting ban

Posted

The state House of Represen­tatives overwhelmingly passed legislation in 2008 to restore vot­ing rights to all Mississippians convicted of felonies, except for those convicted of murder or rape.

The 2008 legislation later died in the Senate, where Phil Bryant presided as lieutenant governor. Current House Speaker Philip Gunn, then a sophomore legisla­tor from Clinton, was among the few House members to vote against the 2008 bill.

Since 2008 there has not been any serious efforts by legislators to move Mississippi more toward the nation’s mainstream, where in more than 40 states voting rights for those convicted of felonies are restored automati­cally at some point after their sentence is completed.

In the upcoming 2022 session, House Judiciary B Chairman Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth, has vowed to try to make the process of restoring voting rights for Mississippians with felony convictions “more consistent and fairer.”

\What that effort looks like re­mains to be seen. Bain has stressed that at this point he is not trying to completely scrap Mississippi’s archaic felony vot­ing ban.

The surest way to make what­ever changes Bain decides to try to make would be to amend the 1890 Constitution to revise the language that disenfranchises people convicted of certain felonies.

“Obviously we can try to amend the Constitution, but that is a high burden,” said Bain, who held a legislative hearing in Oc­tober on the issue.

Changes to the state Constitu­tion require approval by two-thirds of the members of each chamber of the Legislature and voter approval.

The current language in the Constitution says to restore vot­ing rights, approval is needed from two-thirds of the elected membership of both chambers of the Legislature. Voting rights also have been restored through gubernatorial pardons and by ju­dicial expungements, though the process is burdensome and not allowed for all convicted of felonies.

The Legislature normally ap­proves individual bills to restore voting rights one person at a time. Normally less than five people have their rights restored each year. In the 2021 session, the rights of just two people were restored.

But there seemed to be a con­sensus at Bain’s October hearing that rights could be restored to large swaths of people in one piece of legislation instead of restoring rights one person and one bill at a time.

Some said they believe the Legislature has the constitutional authority to restore rights to just those already convicted.

But Paloma Wu, a deputy di­rector with the Mississippi Cen­ter for Justice, said she believes the Constitution is not clear on the issue and said legislators could restore voting rights for people convicted in the future and allow the courts to interpret the issue should a lawsuit be filed challenging the law.

Most all agreed, though, that to restore the rights to a large group of people would take two-thirds approval from members of both chambers just as it does to restore rights to an individual convicted of a felony. That process could prove difficult in a Legislature where in recent years, many members of the Re­publican majority have been re­luctant to restore voting rights.

In a perfect world, Bain has said he believes it should be an­other entity, such as the judiciary, and not the Legislature that re­stores voting rights. It is not clear whether giving that authority to the courts could be done with­out a constitutional amendment.

There is no public polling on whether voters would support removing the lifetime ban on voting if the Legislature offered such a proposal to the elec­torate. In Florida, voters over­whelmingly approved an initiative removing the ban.

One of the problems with the current process in Mississippi, Bain has said, is that a person faces a lifetime ban on voting for a felony bad check writing con­viction, for instance, but could vote while in prison if convicted of child pornography or of being a major drug dealer.

The current system of disen­franchisement for those con­victed of certain felonies has its roots in the state’s Jim Crow-era.

In the 1890s, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote the dis­franchisement of people of spe­cific felonies was placed in the Constitution “to obstruct the ex­ercise of the franchise by the negro race” by targeting “the of­fenses to which its weaker mem­bers were prone.” The crimes selected by lawmakers to go into the Constitution were thought by the white political leaders as more likely to be committed by African Americans.

That provision is currently being challenged on constitu­tional grounds in the federal courts with two cases pending before the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Attorneys have ar­gued that the provision’s intent is the same as the poll tax, the lit­eracy test and other Jim Crow-era provisions that sought to prevent African Americans from voting.






Powered by Creative Circle Media Solutions