Supreme Court refuses to let ex-felons vote

The ruling continues to take the vote from millions of African Americans and non-violent offenders – and, in practice, others who have broken no laws at all. It is highly likely to strengthen the lock of the Republican Party and its future candidates on the U.S. presidency.

In Florida 2000, Republican Gov. Jeb Bush used the ban as a pretext for disenfranchising tens of thousands of mostly Black voters who committed no crime at all, but whose names allegedly resembled those who did. In the lead-up to his brother’s test at the polls, Bush hired a Republican computer firm to compile a dubious list which Bush then used to deprive perhaps 120,000 Floridians, perhaps more, of their right to vote.

It has since been shown that thousands of those who lost their vote had never been convicted of anything. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of alleged Florida ex-felons effectively deprived of their right to vote in 2000 may have been as high as 600,000, roughly a thousand times as many as allegedly gave George W. Bush his margin of victory.

Ohio’s laws encompass no ban on ex-felon voting rights. But Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell also served as the state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. As chief administrator of Ohio’s 2004 election, Blackwell allowed county Boards of Elections to send threatening letters to thousands ex-felons or alleged ex-felons. Letters also went to many registered voters who had been convicted of no crime at all, helping give George W. Bush a second term.

Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder, former head of the county’s GOP, admitted to the Free Press that in an average year he cancels 200-300 felons’ voting rights. But, he said, in the 2004 election, he cancelled the rights of 3,500 alleged former felons to vote. Many of their convictions date back to 1998, and some who received letters had merely been indicted and had never been convicted of any felony at all.

In 1870, the U.S. adopted the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans the right to vote, regardless of race – but not gender. But white racist regimes in the former confederacy quickly found ways to circumvent the amendment.

One such tool was the ex-felon ban. Along with poll taxes, the grandfather clause, disenfranchising anyone whose grandfather had been a slave, lynching and other violent intimidation, the attack on ex-felon voting rights was aimed directly at a Black community that had started to gain political power in the South.

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