Dozens Of Civil Rights Groups Ask Presidential Candidates To Support Letting People In Prison Vote

[Donkees]

Bernie Sanders is the only 2020 candidate so far to say unequivocally that incarcerated people should be able to vote.

By Sam Levine 04/30/2019

Excerpt:

More than 70 civil rights and advocacy groups are urging candidates seeking the presidency to allow people to vote while they are incarcerated, signing an open letter on Tuesday to push an issue already dividing the Democratic field.

Only Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said people incarcerated should be able to vote. He is the only 2020 presidential candidate so far to take that stance.

Seventy-three groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Greenpeace signed the letter. The longstanding practice of banning people convicted of felonies from voting in the United States is “as senseless as it is cruel,” the groups wrote. They say the practice is tinged with racism and that many felon disenfranchisement laws were drafted in the Jim Crow south as a way to keep African American men from voting after they gained the right to vote.

“Felony disenfranchisement is not just anti-democratic and bad for public safety, it is an unpopular practice that sprang from the most shameful era of American history, a vestige of our past wildly out of step with international norms. And now is the moment for its abandonment,” the letter says. “This growing movement against felony disenfranchisement is a promising endorsement of American values, but it raises a key question: Why disenfranchise people in prison to begin with? Why not let them continue to vote while they are incarcerated?”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/civil-rights-groups-felon-disenfranchisement_n_5cc8595de4b05379114b490b

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5983400-Open-Letter-to-Presidential-Candidates-on-Voting.html

[JonLP24]

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