For the first time in a decade, a clear path exists for New York State lawmakers to end the Jim Crow-era injustice preventing thousands of their fellow citizens from accessing the ballot box. Now is the moment for the state Senate and Assembly to pass S. 1931/A. 4987 to permanently restore voting rights to all formerly incarcerated New Yorkers upon their reentry from prison. I urge legislators to seize the opportunity before them this session to abolish felony disenfranchisement, an anti-democratic practice rooted in white supremacy.
At any given time, nearly 30,000 New Yorkers on parole are ineligible to vote. State law thus imposes on them a grave, collateral consequence of their criminal conviction — one which strips them of core democratic rights, and renders them second-class citizens.
This is not what justice looks like, as 15 other states have now recognized. Justice for reentering New Yorkers means affording them the same opportunities as their peers to share in fundamental aspects of community building and civic engagement, whether it is working, raising a family, or participating in the political process. This is why my office is funding New York’s first statewide college-in-prison program, and social enterprises that hire reentering New Yorkers. It’s why we hire reentering New Yorkers to work at the D.A.’s office, and why we proudly supported the movement to “Ban the Box.”
As I wrote to state lawmakers this March, disenfranchising New Yorkers who have fully paid their debt to society violates foundational principles of our state’s criminal laws, as well as basic humanity and dignity. In our office, we work from the presumption that the consequences of incarceration in a New Yorker’s life should not last one more day than necessary. Our felony disenfranchisement law achieves the opposite result, erecting needless barriers to personal liberty that disproportionately harm people of color.
History tells us this is no accident. New York’s felony disenfranchisement law flows from the poisoned well of racist post-Civil War policy. “[A]t the very same time that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments forced the state to remove its nefarious property requirements for African-American voters,” New York began requiring its counties to disenfranchise those convicted of “infamous crimes,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice’s 2010 report Jim Crow in New York. It is from this dark period in our history that our discriminatory present springs. As the Brennan Center noted, some 140 years later, nearly 80% of people who New York law barred from voting are African-American or Hispanic.
This shameful reality begs the question: What criminal justice or public safety purpose does felony disenfranchisement serve? I can think of none. Do we honestly believe that New Yorkers are deterred from committing crimes by the prospect of losing their voting rights?
Just last week, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill to end felony disenfranchisement for people on parole, leaving New York, California and Connecticut as the only states which, inexplicably, provide voting rights to people on probation but not to people on parole.
I commend Gov. Cuomo for exercising his pardon power to reinstitute voting rights for paroled New Yorkers. Now, the state Legislature should do its part to codify and build upon the governor’s April 2018 executive order. They should affirm their commitment to justice reform by permanently restoring the vote to New Yorkers on parole.
Vance is the district attorney of Manhattan.
