State's felon voting law still unclear

State's felon voting law still unclear
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By Markeshia Ricks

When Alabama made it easier for certain felons to regain the right to vote, it was hailed as a victory.

But the law designed to make it easier for them to regain their voting rights has caused confusion and lawsuits -- because only crimes involving "moral turpitude" include disenfranchisement as part of the penalty.

The state has no definitive list of which specific crimes cost a person their voting rights and which don't, and it's not likely to get one before the November elections.

Like most states, Alabama restricts the rights of felons to vote. The Sentencing Project estimates some 250,000 people in the state are ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction.

The new law was supposed to make it easier for felons who had done their time to regain their voting rights. Though an advocate for felon voting rights said the situation has improved since the law went into effect in 1993, the phone still rings off the hook every election year at the pardons and parole board with people asking questions.

Sarah Still, former manager of the state's Pardon Unit, said the state Board of Pardons and Paroles is flooded with felon-voting questions during every major election cycle, particularly after big voter registration drives.

More than 5,500 people have had their voting rights restored under the new process, and 220 had requests pending at the end of July. Another 327 received pardons between the beginning of the year and the end of July.

David Sadler, a national advocate and a felon who lost his voting rights for a drug-possession conviction when he was 18, said the Alabama bill that passed was watered down, "but it helped us get a foot through the door."

But many of the calls fielded by Pardons and Paroles officials come from felons who have had their voter registration rejected -- even though they never lost their right to vote. "Since we found out about the moral turpitude issue there has been a lot of confusion," Still said.

You say tomato

Under a 1996 amendment of the Alabama Constitution, felons convicted of crimes involving "moral turpitude" lost their voting rights until they were restored through the pardons process. Though the Alabama Supreme Court defined moral turpitude in 1916 as an act that is "immoral itself, regardless of the fact whether it is punishable by law," the state Legislature has never defined which crimes fall under this definition.

In 2003, the state passed a new law that allowed any person who lost their right to vote to use an expedited process to get their voting rights restored if they completed their sentence, paid all fines and had no pending felony charges. The new process takes 45 to 90 days to complete.

However, people who are convicted of murder, rape, sodomy and other sexual crimes can't use the new process to get their rights restored. Still said a person who commits these crimes would have to go through the more rigorous pardon process and that can take a year or more.

But what the law still leaves unresolved is which crimes are disenfranchising and which ones are not.

Attorney General Troy King said he tried to clear up some of the confusion by issuing an opinion that included a list of offenses that would disqualify felons from using the new process, and which ones wouldn't. King's lists, which add some crimes that the Legislature's list did not, are based on cases that involved moral turpitude, he said.

"That's been one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole thing," he said. "It wasn't me trying to keep people from voting, it was Nancy Worley who was going to keep all convicted felons from voting."

In 2005, then-Secretary of State Worley directed the boards of registrars in the state to treat every felony conviction as one involving moral turpitude, resulting in a lawsuit brought by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. The judge sided with the plaintiffs and declared the state's disenfranchisement law null and void until the Legislature defined the moral turpitude clause. But the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the judge's decision, saying that the case had nothing to do with the clause.

King's attempt to provide some clarity resulted in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Alabama against him and current Secretary of State Beth Chapman. The suit alleges that King's list of disqualifying felonies and Chapman's directive to boards of registrars to follow that list goes beyond what the law intends.

The ACLU believes that the crimes listed by the Legislature are the disenfranchising crimes, or those involving moral turpitude.

"We're arguing that the attorney general has the authority to interpret the law, not make it," said Sam Brooke, law fellow for the ACLU of Alabama. "The list that the attorney general produced goes beyond what the Legislature intended, and is not valid for registrars to rely on."

But the attorney general's list is being relied on. George Noblin, chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Registrars, said the board checks felon registrants against the attorney general's list, and notifies a person if they are disqualified according to that list.

"Of course it's not a complete list," he said. "I think it is something that the Legislature is eventually going to have to specify a more complete list."

Wait and see

While the efforts to sort it all out rage on, plenty of people like Karen Carr are moving through the system, hoping to get their rights back in time for the November election.

Carr was convicted of first-degree robbery more than 10 years ago, and she's been out of prison for more than four. While her crime is not on the list of crimes that the state Legislature said are ineligible for the speedier process, it is on the attorney general's list.

"When I was a young adult, no one explained to me the importance of your voice," she said. "But now that I've had the opportunity to grow and mature and learn the legislative process, I see the importance of having a vote.

"My thing is, what is it that makes you less of a person because you have a felony?"

Carr said what she found out when she got out of prison was that there are restrictions on where you could live, work and whether you can vote if you are a felon.

"Society says when you get out of prison, 'Do the right thing. Be a law abiding citizen,'" she said. "But you can't pay taxes if you don't work, you can't work if people won't hire you, and the only places you can afford to live are drug-infested neighborhoods where people don't care."

The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, a felon voting rights advocate, said folks like Carr who have turned their lives around are the reason why restoring voting rights is so important.

"When you restore the right to vote you are restoring peoples' lives," said Glasgow, who heads up a Dothan-based ministry called The Ordinary People Society. "In restoring their lives, we restore families, we restore the community and society as a whole. This is what humanity is all about."

Glasgow's ministry has gone into prisons to educate people about their voting rights and to make sure that they register to vote.

When he's not busy with his shuttle service business, David Sadler is doing the same thing.

After working with legislators to get the law passed five years ago, Sadler said he's doubtful that felon-voting rights will be taken up in the state Legislature again anytime soon.

He said education for everyone involved in the process from the person being released from prison to voter registrars is what's important now.

"We must change how we think about the process of re-entry into society," he said.