Felon Disenfranchisement Quotes

Dwayne Betts is the kind of man who should be receiving awards from the Connecticut bar. Instead, he hasn't been admitted.

The worst an ex-con is likely to do if given the right to vote is vote for a Democrat.

I had incorrectly, for all of my adult life until 2008, believed the biggest voting myth that exists - that ex-felons cannot vote.

Restoring the rights of individuals who have served their time and reentered society is the right thing to do. Virginia's felon disenfranchisement policy is rooted in a tragic history of voter suppression and marginalization of minorities, and it needs to be overturned.

Perhaps there should be a box on the census form that says, 'I'm a criminal.' Everyone who has ever committed a crime would be required to check it. If everyone were forced to acknowledge their own criminality, maybe we, as a nation, would second-guess our apparent zeal for denying full citizenship to those branded felons.

When I ran for governor, I talked about the disenfranchisement of voters. I talked about the history that we've had. We've had a horrible history here in Virginia going back to 1901 - the poll tax, literacy tests, disenfranchisement of felons. We're one of the worst four states in America on allowing people back in with voting rights.

Those labeled felons may be denied the right to vote, are automatically excluded from juries, and may be legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, public benefits, much like their grandparents or great grandparents may have been discriminated against during the Jim Crow era.

Felons are typically stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits. They're relegated to a permanent undercaste.

During the Jim Crow era, poll taxes and literacy tests kept the African-Americans from polls. But today, felon disenfranchisement laws accomplished what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not, because those laws were struck down. But felony disenfranchisement laws had been allowed to stand.

Alabama and other states had a terrible record in terms of depriving people of their right to vote, making it difficult for them to vote, discriminating against people.

Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from owning a gun. Seems like kind of a good idea, no?

The very rights that we supposedly won for African Americans in the civil rights movement no longer exist for those labeled felons. That's why I say we have not ended racial caste in America; we've merely redesigned it.

The formerly incarcerated - returning citizens - often face a cruel irony in America. Having paid their debt to society, too many are banned from the ballot box that could help them dismantle policies that essentially extend their sentences.

In fact, in some countries there are actually voting drives conducted in prison! But here in the U.S., we seem to take the idea of democracy a bit less seriously and people are denied the right to vote not only when they are in prison, but also upon release in many states.

Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal if you've been labeled a felon.

Nationwide about 1 in 7 black men are temporarily or permanently disenfranchised due to felon disenfranchisement laws.

People on probation and parole are typically denied the right to vote, and in eleven states people are denied the right to vote even after completion of their sentences.

For the rest of their lives, [black men] can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. So many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again once you've been branded a felon.