Many Ex-Cons Can’t Vote, but Here’s How—and Why—That’s Changing

Walter Mandela Lomax spent nearly 40 years in prison serving a life sentence before he earned his freedom—slowly and in stages.

The first stage came in 2006, when he was released from prison because a judge commuted his sentence, citing problems with his 1968 murder conviction.

With his criminal record stained by the conviction even after his release, Lomax said he was denied full citizenship by a provision in Maryland law that prevented ex-felons from voting in elections.

It wasn’t until 2007, when Maryland overturned its lifetime voting ban for ex-felons, that Lomax felt he was made whole. His murder conviction was fully overturned in 2014.

“I had never voted before in my life, because I was arrested when I was 21. Shortly before I registered to vote,” Lomax told TakePart. “I felt a sense of empowerment and I felt the power to campaign for local political races. That gave me such a sense of self-worth.”

On Wednesday, Maryland took a giant step toward restoring that sense of self-worth to 40,000 more Maryland residents: The state’s house of delegates voted 85–56 to override Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a measure to grant voting rights to convicted felons on parole or probation.

The final step in the process is expected early next month, when Maryland’s Democrat-held senate can finalize the override measure.

“It’s a great deal. It’s the only way we’re going to fix our communities, because voting equates to resources,” said delegate Cory McCray, a Democrat, who spearheaded the legislation.

Voting rights are tied to more than the ballot box in Maryland, where ex-felons can be denied professional certification on account of their criminal record.

By earning the right to vote, McCray said, those with criminal records can shift public policy to ease their transition to normal life.

“Let’s say you serve 10 years in prison, and you learn to cut hair while you’re there. If you want to get your license to cut hair after your release, there are barriers,” McCray said. “In order for [people with criminal records] to be able to fix that, we have to engage them and make sure they have a say in public policy.”

Maryland’s vote follows a decade-long trend of states expanding voting rights to ex-felons, including the lifting of lifetime bans in New Mexico and Nebraska.

The push began after the razor-thin margin of the 2000 presidential election, in which thousands of African Americans were prohibited from voting because of stains on their criminal record, said Nicole Porter, director of criminal justice advocacy group The Sentencing Project.

“There was a strong belief that if thousands of individuals in Florida who were disenfranchised were allowed to vote, the election would have ended differently,” Porter said.

The Sentencing Project reported in 2015 that nearly 6 million Americans are barred from voting owing to past felony convictions. The disproportionate impact of Florida’s laws on African Americans is mirrored nationwide, where they make up one-third of disenfranchised felons.

Advocates are up against a public perception that the push to restore voting rights to ex-felons is nothing more than a Democratic ploy to enlist more voters in their party. But in Minnesota, where 75 percent of disenfranchised felons are white and 64 percent live in rural communities, recent efforts to restore voting rights to felons on parole is gaining bipartisan steam.

Mark Haase, the coordinator of Minnesota’s Restore the Vote Coalition, said Republicans have championed it on the grounds of civil liberties, public safety, and a faith-based inclination toward forgiveness.

“There’s the public safety aspect, which says that the more people are engaged in their community while on parole, the less likely they are to be repeat offenders,” Haase said. “The faith-based aspect says that we’re all gonna be better off if we allow people to get past their mistakes and get involved in their community.”

Despite growing bipartisan support, the expansion of voting rights to ex-felons has come in fits and starts. In 2007, Florida’s Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican who left the party in 2012, instituted automatic voting rights restoration to ex-felons who completed their full sentence, only to see those rights rescinded under his more conservative successor, Rick Scott.

Kentucky saw a similar scenario play out in a single month. In December, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin overturned an executive order granting voting rights to 140,000 ex-felons signed fewer than 30 days earlier by outgoing Democrat Steven Beshear.

“Politics does get in the way,” Porter said. “Bevin said he supported the idea in general but said executive action was counter to democracy.”

Opponents of re-enfranchisement measures for parolees argue that voting rights shouldn’t be extended to those who are still repaying their debt to society. When Hogan first vetoed Maryland’s voting rights legislation in May, he sent a letter to senate members stating that “the current law archives the proper balance between the repayment of obligations to society for a felony conviction and the restoration of various restricted rights.”

McCray took the opposite view, arguing that because ex-felons aren’t relieved from the burdens of citizenship, they shouldn’t be denied the benefits.

“Ex-convicts ride public transit lines, they worship in our churches, and the thing I always say is, these people pay taxes,” McCray said.