The restoration of voting rights is a small step, but a necessary one in getting Mississippi away from its self-destructive habit of putting too many convicted felons under a life sentence long after they get out of prison.
The Associated Press reports that Gov. Phil Bryant, who is in his final year in office, has allowed voting rights to be restored to 16 people. That’s not a lot, but it’s a big change from his first seven years, when he only allowed a total of 18 felons to regain the right to vote.
Here’s further evidence of Bryant’s willingness to take a second look at this issue: All 18 people who got their voting rights restored during Bryant’s first seven years did so in bills that became law without the governor signature. This year, he only followed that practice twice, while signing bills for the other 14 people.
The state Constitution lists 10 felonies that, upon conviction, remove voting rights from a person. The attorney general added 12 more crimes, which are related to those listed in the Constitution, to the list in 2009.
Most are serious crimes: murder, rape, robbery, carjacking, arson, embezzlement and extortion, to list the more prominent. A few are less serious, such as perjury and the “unlawful taking of a vehicle.”
Few will object to people convicted of these crimes losing the right to vote while they are serving their sentence, whether it’s in prison or in another program like drug court or house arrest. It also seems to be a reasonable penalty to withhold the right to vote during some or all of the convict’s probation or parole period.
What is bothersome is the permanence of the penalty, no matter how severe the crime. It’s impossible, for example, to support restoring voting rights for someone who intentionally kills or rapes another person. But it’s not even a close call to say that somebody convicted of perjury or taking a vehicle ought to have their full citizenship restored after meeting all the terms of their sentence.
Advocates for the restoration of voting rights note that in 2016, 218,000 residents of Mississippi had lost the right to vote. Only 7 percent of them were in prison. The rest were on probation or parole, or had completed their sentence. These are the people who should be considered for the return of the right to vote.
The Sentencing Project has two common-sense suggestions on this topic. The state should provide an annual report of how many people lost their voting rights during the past year and how many got them restored. Also, the state should notify convicts who have finished their sentence of how they can regain their voting rights.
This is a small element of criminal justice reform that Mississippi badly needs. Our laws basically discourage convicts from straightening up. Too many of them are unable (and in some cases, unwilling) to find a job after their sentence, making them prime candidates to break the law again. It is vital that Mississippi end this pattern of perpetual trouble.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
