https://themilitant.com/2018/11/24/voting-rights-amendment-for-ex-prisoners-wins-big-majority/
Voting rights amendment for ex-prisoners wins big majority
By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 82/No. 45
December 3, 2018
The passage of Amendment 4 in Florida restoring voting rights to most
people convicted of felonies there is an important victory for working
people and gives an impetus to similar fights across the country.
The owners of the New York Times and other liberals and middle-class
radicals claim that workers who elected Republican Ron DeSantis governor
in Florida put a “fascist” like President Donald Trump in office. But
the 64 percent vote, overwhelming working-class, in favor of the voting
rights amendment shows that hysteria about a wave of reaction in the
U.S. working class is false to the core. Working people oppose attacks
on democratic rights.
Two states, Iowa and Kentucky, still have laws like the one just
overturned in Florida that permanently bar all felons from voting. Eight
others permanently bar some felons. Fourteen states restore voting
rights upon release from prison. Most of the rest restore those rights
after completion of parole or probation. Only two states, Maine and
Vermont, allow everyone to vote, including workers behind bars.
Supporters of the amendment to the Florida Constitution collected more
than a million signatures to get it on the ballot. They organized
demonstrations, concerts, action days and toured a bus around the state
painted in big letters: “Let My People Vote.”
Blacks — imprisoned disproportionately in the U.S. — are thus
disproportionately denied voting rights. Though just 17 percent of state
residents, Blacks comprise some 46 percent of those in Florida prisons.
Before passage of the law, one in five Blacks there couldn’t vote
because of past felony convictions, compared to one in 13 in the rest of
the country.
“Any crime over $300 is a felony,” Karen Leicht, 61, who served over two
years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, told
the Times. “Three times with a suspended license and you’re a felon.”
Under the new law, workers convicted of felonies will be able to vote
once they finish their parole or probation. Those found guilty of murder
or sex crimes are excluded. Even with these restrictions more than 1
million people will have their voting rights restored starting in January.
Kentucky, Iowa, New Jersey next?
The Florida victory has already sparked a discussion in Kentucky, where
more than 312,000 people — including more than 68,000 Blacks — are
disenfranchised because of felony convictions.
Unlike Florida, amendments to the Kentucky Constitution have to be
proposed by the state legislature, and then, like in Florida, win at
least 60 percent of the vote in a referendum. An attempt to get the
measure on the ballot failed in 2016. There is growing coverage in the
press of efforts to push for a new vote.
A legislative advisory board in Iowa recommended Nov. 14 restoring
voting rights there as well. Some 52,000 Iowa residents are denied
voting rights because of past convictions. The 22-member board approved
the proposal without a single vote against.
A Nov. 12 editorial in the Newark Star-Ledger was headlined “NJ Must
Boost Voting Rights for Felons. Florida Just Did.”
“There are 73,000 felons in our state on probation and parole. Why would
we deny voting rights to 15,000 parolees who have already paid their
debt with a prison sentence?” the editors asked. “And why would anyone
deny the vote to 58,000 people on probation when they have never even
been in jail?”
The Star-Ledger adds that disenfranchisement “has racist origins: The
Black Codes employed by the South after the Civil War deprived the
freedman from voting, so ‘crimes’ such as loitering were enforced to
subjugate former slaves. These methods persist, as drug laws have
banished millions of men of color from the mainstream and created the
prison industrial complex.”
Disenfranchisement goes back to the founding of the United States and
was directed at the growing working class. Under the Constitution,
voting rights were decided state by state. In the early years only
landowners could vote. It wasn’t until 1856 that the last state, North
Carolina, removed property ownership as a requirement.
The bloody battles to defend and use the franchise by Blacks coming out
of the victory of the Civil War and Radical Reconstruction led to the
15th Amendment. This says that the right to vote shall not be denied “on
account of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude.” Women
didn’t win the right to vote until 1920. Eighteen-year-olds only gained
the franchise in 1971 during the Vietnam War, saying if they were old
enough to fight, they were old enough to vote.
In Louisiana, in another victory for working people, Amendment 2 passed
by over 60 percent of the vote. It requires that juries must vote
unanimously to convict and imprison anyone. A 10-2 vote was previously
enough.
A similar anti-working-class law remains on the books in Oregon.
Discriminatory sentencing changes pushed
President Donald Trump announced Nov. 14 that he was backing the
bipartisan “First Step Act.” This would lower some federal prison
sentences, including “three-strike” provisions that require a mandatory
minimum life sentence for third-time drug offenders. The mandatory
minimum would be set at 25 years.
The bill also makes sentences for crack cocaine shorter retroactively.
The disparity in mandatory sentences for crack cocaine, used mostly in
Black and other working-class communities, and those for use of powder
cocaine, was reduced in 2010, but wasn’t made retroactive.
Millions of people across the U.S. are still denied the right to vote.
Pushing these restrictions back “are an important part of advancing the
unity and fighting capacity of the working class,” Steve Warshell,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida, said in
an Oct. 29 statement calling for passage of Amendment 4.
Class conscious workers everywhere should take advantage of the victory
and keep fighting until all restrictions on voting rights — and the
imposition of mandatory sentences — are brought down.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Florida voting rights victory is gain for the
working class!
•Voting rights amendment for ex-prisoners wins big majority
•Calif. wildfire carnage is product of capitalist rule
•‘Speak out against attacks by bosses, their government’
•Marriott hotel workers strikes going strong, winning contracts
•Gaza fighting shows need to recognize Israel, Palestinian state
Feature Articles •‘Militant’ wins round against Florida prison censorship
Also In This Issue •Brazil vote reflects toilers’ anger at corruption,
crime and crisis
•France: ‘Yellow Vests’ protests hit gas tax, Macron government
•Protests in Norway defend women’s right to abortion
•Fall 2018 Militant Subscription Campaign (week 6)
•Socialist Workers Party 2018 Fall Fund Drive (week 6)
On the Picket Line •Uber drivers strike in India, demand fares they can
live on
•New Zealand: Sistema workers fight for better pay, conditions
Books of the Month •‘Angola experience had a big impact on consciousness
in Cuba’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst
out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how
wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
