03/24/10
 Last week the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on HR 3335, also known as the Democracy Restoration Act of 2009. This bill, sponsored by Congressman John Conyers (D - MI) and introduced in the Senate as S 1516 by Senator Feingold (D - WI), would uniformly restore voting rights to felons who have completed their term of incarceration. The Senate bill has been referred to the Judiciary Committee but no hearings have yet taken place. The key provision of the bill, found in section 3, reads ''The right of an individual who is a citizen of the United States to vote in any election for Federal office shall not be denied or abridged because that individual has been convicted of a criminal offense unless such individual is serving a felony sentence in a correctional institution or facility at the time of the election.''
This isn't the first time this year that felony disenfranchisement has hit our radar. Back in early January, the 9th Circuit said that Washington state's felony disenfranchisement law violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This ruling goes even further than the bill before Congress in that it would restore voting rights to felons still behind bars. The court relied on a change to section 2 of the VRA that in essence applies disparate impact theory to racial discrimination in voting, an argument echoed by proponents of the Democracy Restoration Act.
According to the authors of the bill, some 5 million Americans are currently denied the right to vote due to a felony conviction. Of those, almost 4 million have been released from prison. 2 million African-Americans, representing about 8% of all African-Americans, have been disenfranchised, and Hispanics are also disproportionately likely to be disenfranchised.
Opponents of the bill argue that it represents an unconstitutional infringement on the right of the states to determine voter eligibility. Hans A. von Spakovsky, a counselor to the Civil Rights Division under former President Bush, argues 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'' according to this article at main justice. Spakovsky, a critic of the disparate impact theory, goes on to say ''criminals lose their right to vote because of their own conscious actions in violating the law, not because of their race.''
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