Felons may sit in Congress, but not in the voting booth

Millions of Americans have been deprived their foremost civic right of voting due to felony convictions, even long after having paid their debts to society. America is alone among the world’s democracies in tolerating a shameful state of affairs where, according to a report from Human Rights Watch,

• An estimated 3.9 million Americans, or one in fifty adults, have
  currently or permanently lost the ability to vote because of a felony
  conviction.
  
• 1.4 million persons disenfranchised for a felony
  conviction are ex-offenders who have completed their criminal sentence. 
  Another 1.4 million of the disenfranchised are on probation or parole.
  
• 1.4 million African American men, or 13 percent of the black adult male
  population, are disenfranchised, reflecting a rate of
  disenfranchisement that is seven times the national average. More than
  one-third (36 percent) of the total disenfranchised population are
  black men.
  
• Ten states disenfranchise more than one in five
  adult black men; in seven of these states, one in four black men is
  permanently disenfranchised.
  
• Given current rates of
  incarceration, three in ten of the next generation of black men will be
  disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime. In states with the
  most restrictive voting laws, 40 percent of African American men are
  likely to be permanently disenfranchised.

American civic life must be protected from the judgment of people who once broke the law (and people who just happen to be disproportionately poor and non-white; such laws were first devised after the Civil War to hamper the enfranchisement of  freed slaves in the South) even if they’ve served out their sentences and been released, goes the reasoning, but a legislator convicted of a felony somehow poses no threat.  Curious.

The voices of voters with criminal records must be silenced for the sake of the integrity of the democratic process, but convicted felons may be elected to Congress?

Stevens guilty on 7 counts, won’t quit Senate race – Yahoo! News

Ted Stevens, a pillar of the Senate for 40 years and the face of Alaska politics almost since statehood, was convicted of a seven-felony string of corruption charges Monday — found guilty of accepting a bonanza of home renovations and fancy trimmings from an oil executive and then lying about it.

Unbowed, even defiant, Stevens accused prosecutors of blatant misconduct and said, “I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have.”

The senator, 84 and already facing a challenging re-election contest next Tuesday, said he would stay in the race against Democrat Mark Begich. Though the convictions are a significant blow for the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, they do not disqualify him, and Stevens is still hugely popular in his home state.

The Washington Post gives the specific charges.  I don’t know much about Stevens or the case, but it does sound rather shady, even if much of these offenses are relatively venal (a fact that doesn’t detract from the comparison, as many felons are convicted of non-violent offenses that many would find unthreatening in a voter, especially in juridictions that have succumbed to the foolish calls for immoral 3-strikes-you’re-out sentencing rules).

P.S. I highly recommend this excellent documentary for insight into how much race plays a role in our criminal justice system today. The higher rates of incarceration for African-Americans are not simply a matter of more African-Americans commiting crimes, which makes this moral issue all the more burning.