While many Americans are understandably concerned about the use of electronic voting machines in this years' presidential election, yet another sinister voting concern has reared its ugly head again. The purging of felony voters from voter rolls across the country reminds us that even in the 21st century African-Americans continue to fight for the right to vote.

With the exception of Maine and Vermont, all states punish convicted felons by removing their right to vote while incarcerated. However, even after a felon has served their time and been released from prison, 13 states still prohibit that individual's right to vote and nine states impose lifetime voting bans for convicted felons. Several of these states offer procedures whereby a felon can petition to become re-enfranchised but the procedure is so long and cumbersome that few people bother going through it. As a result, nearly 4 million adult Americans - 2 percent of the voting-age population - have lost their fundamental right to participate in our political process.

Chances are few Americans realize that these laws even exist. There are also those naively seduced by Right-Wing pundits spinning and twisting and presenting this issue as a bunch of 'Liberal Do-Gooders' advocating for the right of felons to vote. While the matter of whether or not convicted felons, incarcerated, paroled or on probation, should retain their right to vote is an important, complex issue rooted in our troubled history of discrimination, it is not exclusively the issue at hand. It's one thing to purge convicted felons from voter rolls based on the use of an out-dated, disproportionately enforced 19th century law, but it's inexcusable to mistakenly prohibit innocent people from exercising one of the fundamental rights of citizenry.

The racial implications of these laws are astounding:

13 percent of black men in America cannot vote because of a felony conviction.

Human Rights Watch estimates that 31% of Black voting-age men in Florida have been disenfranchised.

In Florida, 91,000 legal voters were purged from the voter rolls in error and not allowed to vote in the 2000 election. One list sent to Florida officials inaccurately contained 8,000 people who had committed misdemeanors -- not felonies -- in Texas. Florida wasn't alone, nationwide over 1 million black voters were wrongly disenfranchised as similar events also occurred in Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Tennessee and 18 other states. Voter disenfranchisement has been occurring in elections throughout America history. A more intriguing and revealing question is how, when, and why did it all begin in the first place?

History of Disenfranchisement

The Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War was as devastating to the country as the War itself. America was a nation in crisis: President Lincoln was dead, the North now faced the tremendous task of reincorporating the South back into the Union, and Andrew Johnson, now President, was disliked by both the North and the South. In the midst of this turmoil, an unexpected reality came to light in September of 1867 that started this history of disenfranchisement.

When the registration of voters in the 10 unreconstructed Southern states was completed, there was a projected 635,000 whites on the voter rolls and 735,000 blacks.

Before the Civil War, blacks generally could not vote. The South (Unreconstructed Confederates) then realized that in a number of states, they could actually be outvoted, which is what happened in the presidential election of 1868.

President Ulysses S. Grant actually 'lost' the election among the nation's total 5,000,000 white voters (North and South combined), 2,300,000 for Grant vs. 2,700,00 for the opponent Horatio Seymour. Grant was able to win the election because he received almost 700,000 black votes--nearly all of the 735,000 black voters. The only way for the Unreconstructed Confederates to gain control of the country would be if they prevented blacks from voting. So they began ruthlessly obstructing and disenfranchising black voters.

Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest and unreconstructed southerners saw that if they could eliminate or significantly reduce the black vote, they could once again dominate America and the Presidency. They had to figure out a way to do this. And they did. The U.S. Constitution disallowed the South from directly stopping blacks from voting but the ex-Confederates found and exploited a loop-hole in the 13th Amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The U.S. Constitution allowed "slavery" as a penalty for crime, i.e., allowed imprisonment. In constitutional terms, imprisonment is a form of slavery; being imprisoned is equivalent to being a slave, thus the U.S. Constitution allows the disenfranchisement of criminals. Ex-Confederates in office at the time manipulated state Constitutions' voter qualifications by allowing voting despite crimes they felt whites committed, while disenfranchising for crimes they felt blacks committed.

At the constitutional convention in Mississippi in 1890, disenfranchisement was defined so that burglary, theft, and arson --which were considered more likely to be committed by black men--were subject to disenfranchisement, while robbery and murder--which white men were more likely to commit--were not.

Adopting this policy, many states then revised their criminal disenfranchisement laws specifically to prohibit blacks from voting.

Disenfranchisement Timeline

November 1868: Grant Elected President
Ulysses S. Grant is elected president by only 306,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast. His victory depends on 500,000 black votes.

February 1869: Congress Proposes the 15th Amendment
Congress proposes the 15th Amendment, which forbids states from depriving a citizen of the vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Amendment is ratified in March 1870.

May 1870 and April 1871:The Force Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act
Congress passes the Force Act and Ku Klux Klan Act outlawing the use of force to prevent people from voting. These bills authorized the president to suppress terrorist organizations by force and to impose harsh penalties on them.

1882 -- Act Abolished. President Ulysses S. Grant declares the Ku Klux Klan Act to be unconstitutional.

1890 -- Disenfranchisement Legally Defined and Enforced. Disenfranchisement of convicted felons was deliberately disproportionate in how it was defined and enforced for blacks and whites.

Plan of Action

After the 2000 election, in which the felon list was among the most criticized irregularities, a number of changes in Florida and across the country were enacted. In Florida, for example, a list of felons who should be denied the right to vote has been made available to supervisors of elections around the state, but most members of the public are not allowed to have a copy of the list. Political Strategy.Org requested a list of citizens on the felon list this year from the Florida Board of Elections for Orange County and Palm Beach County. Maria I. Matthews, Assistant General Counsel for the Department of State denied our request citing the following Florida law:

"A person or entity that is not one of the enumerated persons or entities in the statutes is only entitled to view the voter registration information, they can not receive copies of voter registration information."

It seems odd that the list of felons is considered voter registration information because it is simply a list of names potentially to be purged from voter rolls. However, she did provide us with an official list of the number of felons purged from the voter rolls in each county. That number exceeded 47,000.

Voting Victories

There are several possible grounds for a court challenge to felon disenfranchisement laws, including the 14th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, and various international laws and policies. It also might be possible for Congress to permit convicts to vote in federal elections. However, the most effective way to abolish felon disenfranchisement laws is probably to take the debate to state legislatures, which enacted the laws in the first place.

The Sentencing Project, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Florida Caucus of Black State Legislators and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials are just some of the organizations agressively tackling this issue and diligently working to right these voting wrongs. Recent rulings reveal that their efforts have not been in vain:

Re-enfranchisement: Florida Corrections officials are now required to provide eligible people leaving prison with all the forms necessary to apply for restoration of rights and to aid in the preparation of an application.

Procedural Change: Florida will now allow individual election supervisors to create systems to identify ineligible voters. The election officials finally conceded that a vast mistake had been made and abandoned the controversial felons list the state was using to remove convicted felons from the voter rolls. Of the nearly 48,000 people on the purge list, 59% of the potentially ineligible voters had registered as Democrats.

Felony Purge List Discarded: After the Florida list was finally released and found to have substantial errors, the state agreed not to use it for a voter purge.

America has grappled with voting problems since its inception. As disconcerting as it is that these events are still occurring, it is even more disturbing to realize that they have a long-standing tradition in our country. Yet, despite the organizations, laws, amendments, congressional representatives and citizens consistently fighting to ensure Americans have and maintain the right to vote, after the Florida 2000 presidential election debacle that resulted in the purging of thousands of blacks from the voting booth, not one U.S. Senator, Democrat or Republican, came to the aid of those wrongly disenfranchised.

Disproportionate voter purging will no doubt continue until we are able to purge our own racist past and adequately address this issue. The act of voting, actually having a voice in one's own government is one of America's founding principles. Having it unfairly and unjustly taken away from us should not be an option and it definitely should not be a law.

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