AG Eric Holder Leads Charge Toward Restoring Voting Rights for US Felons Bryant Harris - Inter Press Service
go to original February 13, 2014

Should Felons Have Voting Rights? Thom Hartmann debates Horace Cooper, Attorney/Conservative Commentator & Senior Fellow-National Center for Public Policy Research. (thomhartmann)

WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and several key Republican and Democrat senators agree on the need for criminal justice reform, and some are now even seeking to restore voting rights to former felons.

“There is no rational reason to take away someone’s voting rights for life just because they committed a crime, especially after they completed their sentencing,” Holder said at a symposium here. “There’s evidence to suggest that former prisoners whose voting rights are restored are significantly less likely to return to the criminal justice system.”

The attorney general referenced statistics indicating that a third of former criminals who regained their right to vote did not commit repeat offences. Holder also traced the existence of laws barring felons from voting back to the period following the U.S. Civil War, when southern states aggressively sought to keep African Americans from voting.

“Many southern states enacted disenfranchisement schemes to specifically target African Americans,” Holder said. “In 1890, 90 percent of the prison population was black and those swept up in the system could not vote.”

Holder and others say the effects of these policies persist today, as the U.S. system continues to disproportionately affect African Americans.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!