A House subcommittee Tuesday heard arguments for and against legislation that would assure that felons regain the right to vote once they have been released from prison.
Under the bill, the Democracy Restoration Act, states would have to permit felons to participate in federal elections once they have left prison.
The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights, and civil liberties heard testimony from an academic, a Florida election official and representatives of a number of groups, including the NAACP, the Heritage Foundation and the American Probation and Parole Association.
Witnesses testify about the "Democracy Restoration Act of 2009" on Tuesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).
The measure is sponsored by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and 29 cosponsors — most of them members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The findings section of the bill notes that “state disenfranchisement laws disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities” and that, “given current rates of incarceration, approximately one in three of the next generation of African-American men will be disenfranchised at some point during their lifetime.” Hispanics are also disproportionately disenfranchised, according to the findings section of the bill based upon their disproportionate representation in the criminal justice system.
No one representing the Justice Department testified. A DOJ spokesman did not immediately return an e-mail inquiring if the Justice Department supported the proposed legislation. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez has previously said that the Civil Rights Division would fight for disparate impact theory, which he said had been proven in court.
The bill would give the Attorney General the enforcement authority to remedy a violation of the act through civil action. The Bureau of Prisons would be required to notify any individual convicted of a crime under federal law upon their release from jail that they had the right to vote.
The bill faces opposition from conservatives.
Hans A. von Spakovsky, the controversial former counselor to the Civil Rights Division during the Bush administration, argued that the bill “represents an unconstitutional intrusion into the rights of the states. Congress simply does not have the constitutional authority to force states to restore the voting rights of convicted felons,” he said.
Van Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, acknowledged that some Southern states had tried to use felony voting laws to disenfranchise blacks, “those laws have all been changed and amended.” Spakovsky, a critic of disparate impact theory, said that “criminals lose their right to vote because of their own conscious actions in violating the law, not because of their race.”
In his prepared testimony, Spakovsky implied that Democrats supported the bill because convicted felons would vote for them and it would help them win elections.
Also voicing opposition to the bill was Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity.
The other witnesses, including one convicted felon now enrolled at Yale Law School, testified in support of the measure.
“Today, we have created a society that excludes some five million people from the ballot,” said Andres Idarraga. “This exclusion is at the end of a complicated chain that often begins with poverty and a lack of education, involves the criminal justice system and penal institutions, and often ends in isolation, bitterness and disfranchisement,” he said.
Testimony of other witnesses is available on the committee’s Web site.
