2010/01/08 Win in Washington encourages Wisconsin voting-rights activists

Wisconsin voting-rights advocates were encouraged by a Federal Appeals court ruling on Tuesday that struck down a law in Washington state banning incarcerated felons from voting. The court found that the law violated the 1965 voting-rights act against racially discriminatory restrictions on voting because the state's criminal-justice system is "infected" with racial discrimination.

Attorneys arguing against the restrictions on voting rights built their case on the work of University of Washington sociologists who found that blacks are 70 percent more likely — and Latinos and Native Americans 50 percent more likely — than whites to be searched in traffic stops. The research also showed that blacks are nine times more likely to be

incarcerated than whites, despite the fact that the ratio of arrests for violent crime among blacks and whites is less than four-to-one. As a result, 25 percent of black men in Washington are disenfranchised from voting.

More than 40,000 Wisconsin citizens are currently prohibited from voting by our current law, which denies ex-felons on probation or parole the right to vote. Voting-rights advocates in Wisconsin were encouraged by the decision. "This is a step forward in our work to enfranchise Americans all across the country," said Renee Crawford, Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, which is working for passage of the Wisconsin Democracy Restoration Act (AB 353/SB 240), a bill that would restore voting rights to people with felony convictions upon release from incarceration. Seeing a similarity between the two states, Crawford noted, "Washington has 29% of their offenders African American with 3% of their population African American.  Offenders in Wisconsin are about 39% African American with a 5% population statewide."