Advancing Voting Rights on Both Sides of the Atlantic

With a general election scheduled in the U.K. this June, advocates are taking strides toward an important goal: securing voting rights for the country's 84,000 prisoners.

In Europe, 40% of countries deny the vote to prisoners, the United Kingdom among them. Two British organizations, though -- Prison Reform Trust (PRT) and UNLOCK -- have launched a campaign to include prisoners in the U.K.'s democracy. After all, as PRT director Juliet Lyon says, "People are sent to prison to lose their liberty, not their identity...Prison has an important job to do to: prevent the next victim and release people [who are] less, not more likely, to offend again."

The idea of giving prisoners voting rights is gaining momentum in the U.K., and a coalition of legal experts recently predicted widespread legal challenges from prisoners if their rights were denied in the June election.

Only Maine and Vermont allow prisoners to vote in the U.S., and I agree with Lyon -- an expansion of this right would reduce recidivism and integrate prisoners more effectively into the society that they will rejoin someday. Even with a reform-friendly climate in the American criminal justice system, though, it's unlikely that we'll see much movement on prison voting.

On the other hand, felon voting could be another story.

Unlike prison voting, where I can see both sides of the argument, felon disenfranchisement is absolutely unacceptable. Denying someone the vote is a lifetime sentence that communicates loud and clear to former prisoners that their crime will never fully be in the past.

Last month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Washington State's attempt to deny the vote to convicted felons violated the federal Voting Rights Act because it disproportionately affects minorities -- as Chris Cassidy wrote here. Since then, however, the Ninth Circuit has stayed its own decision, while the state of Washington appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. We could be headed for a high court decision on the matter, and Cassidy is right to argue that "no sane voting rights advocate would again submit the pleas of the disenfranchised to such an openly hostile court."

It seems the U.K. might be on the way to securing the prison vote. Meanwhile here in the U.S., we're hoping for an end to felon disenfranchisement. Baby steps.

Photo Credit: Erin MC Hammer