This was originally published in the Alabama Reflector.
SELMA — Voting rights advocates on a panel Saturday highlighted the difficulties those who have completed prison sentences have in trying to regain the right to vote.
Those released from prison can face several obstacles to voting after release. Depending on the severity of the crime for which they were convicted, the formerly incarcerated may have to get a pardon from the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole and certify that they have received it.
“We know that folks who are behind the wall (and) who reenter society, voting is central to who they are, because they have been liberated from the inside out for doing the time behind the wall,” said Chelsey Cartwright, program manager for the Democracy Truth Project with the national chapter of the League of Women Voters. “Understanding restorative justice is not just a buzzword, but is actual people doing work, educating voters and being in community.”
The panel was one in a series of democracy-focused seminars commemorating the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when law enforcement beat civil rights protestors on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge as they began a planned march to Montgomery.
Saturday’s festivities also included seminars hosted by the Transformative Justice Coalition concerning the youth vote and a second that focused on the current challenges to civil rights.
The day began with a “Backwards March” led by the Rev. Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow, founder of the Formerly Incarcerated People Movement. The march started on the Montgomery side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge toward Selma.
Expanding voting rights to people who are formerly incarcerated is one of the key issues that Glasgow continues to advocate for as someone who is formerly incarcerated.
“We left people behind,” he said. “In the Voting Rights Act, formerly incarcerated people were not part of the Voting Rights Act.”
Glasgow said the formerly incarcerated are citizens who “need to be able to speak with their own voices.”“When people get convicted of a felony, they take away their citizenship,” he said. “They don’t have full citizenship. That should remind you of something. That should remind you of slavery.”
The panel of speakers compared the state’s rules to other parts of the country that either make it easier to have their voting rights restored or allow people to retain their right to vote even with a criminal record.
In Pennsylvania, for example, judges in the state must explain to defendants how agreeing to a plea bargain with a prosecutor will affect their right to vote.
“They have to explain to them exactly what their voting rights are before they accept the plea,” said Omar Sabir, chair of the Philadelphia City Commissioners and a member of Saturday’s panel. “To my knowledge, the judges didn’t know what their voting rights were. I am talking all the way up to the state Supreme Court. It was very shocking.”
By comparison, southern states like Alabama tend to make it difficult for those who have been in prison to vote. Members on the panel spoke to rules in Mississippi that require actions by the Legislature for individuals to regain their voting rights because of a criminal conviction.
“It is important to know that they have these draconian laws that continue to govern the way that we should be able to vote,” said Rodreshia Russaw Glasgow, the executive director of The Ordinary People Society, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of criminal justice reform, and the spouse of Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow. “It really diminishes and takes away the power that people have.”
Crimes like treason and impeachment can permanently abolish a person’s right to vote, according to the ACLU of Alabama.
Other crimes, from murder and rape to sexual abuse and possession of obscene materials, require a pardon from the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, before people can have their voting rights restored.
Manslaughter, assault, bigamy and aggravated child abuse require those convicted of those crimes to obtain a Certificate of Eligibility to Register to Vote. People may apply to have their voting rights restored if they have no pending criminal charges, have completed their sentences and paid all their fines, fees and restitution.
If people have not been convicted of those offenses, crimes labeled as crimes of moral turpitude, then they have not lost their right to vote.
Alabama passed a law in 2017 formally defining crimes of moral turpitude. The measure was intended to make clear which crimes can deprive a person of their right to vote.
Last year, Republican legislators added language to HB 100, sponsored by Rep. Adline Clarke, D-Mobile, originally meant to enhance criminal penalties for people who committed crimes against those who worked at polling places, to expand the offenses considered crimes of moral turpitude to include domestic violence, membership in a street gang and aggravated stalking. In total, the Campaign Legal Center estimated that the list of offenses went from 40 to 120.
“Now we have bills that are expanding the crimes of moral turpitude,” Rodreshia Russaw Glasgow said. “What they are doing is trying to reverse the work of the lawsuits that allow people to vote in the state in the first place.”