Felons must get gun rights back if they want voting rights restored, Tennessee officials say

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The state’s enhanced recovery policy will require people convicted of a crime to have their gun rights restored before they can become eligible to vote again, the Tennessee elections office said Tuesday, affirming a mandate that officials had debated internally.

Last summer, election officials interpreted a state Supreme Court ruling as requiring that all convicted felons seeking voting rights restoration must first have their full citizenship rights restored by a judge or show they have been pardoned. Voting rights advocates have argued that the legal interpretation was way off base.

The change, instituted by election officials in July, has since halted nearly all voting rights restoration, with more than 60 people turned away and only one person approving. According to data from the Secretary of State, about 200 people were approved and 120 rejected in the nearly seven months before its introduction.

State elections coordinator Mark Goins announced the decision on gun rights Tuesday when asked by The Associated Press. Referring to the court’s ruling, he reiterated that a person’s full citizenship rights must be restored before he or she can regain the right to vote, adding, “Under the Tennessee Constitution, the right to bear arms is a right of citizenship.”

Last month, election officials in Tennessee expressed uncertainty about restoring voting rights to convicted felons who had not regained their gun rights. They said in court statements that they held up 12 such applications while consulting with the attorney general’s office.

All drug crimes and violent crimes in Tennessee specifically strip a person’s gun rights, and high-level action, such as a governor’s pardon, is needed to restore their right to vote, according to the Campaign Legal Center.

The center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group, had already filed a federal class action lawsuit against the state over its earlier voting rights restoration process — before the new rules were even in effect — arguing that it amounted to the suppression of black voters.

The lawsuit alleges that the state fails to clarify which officials can sign the necessary forms, fails to provide criteria for denial and provides no avenue for appeal. Tennessee also requires applicants to be current on restitution, court costs and child support payments. The state also already prohibits the restoration of voting rights for certain categories of crimes if committed within a certain period.

The lawsuit was expected to go to trial in November last year. The policy change sparked by the Supreme Court’s decision led to court delays, making it unlikely a trial will happen until after this year’s election.

“Despite the Tennessee Legislature’s clear intent to create meaningful pathways for voting rights restoration, the Elections Department, with help from the Attorney General’s office, continues to twist the law into tortured knots to prevent the 475,000 Tennesseans, including more than 20% of the Black voting population, Tennesseans, with prior felony convictions for voting,” said Blair Bowie, Director of Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote.

In its June decision, the Supreme Court ruled against a man who wanted to register to vote in the state after being pardoned for a crime committed decades ago in Virginia. The court ruled that he still had to go through the process of restoring his voting rights.

While Tennessee election officials have acknowledged that the court’s ruling applied only to the specific circumstances of that case, they said the wording was close enough to the requirements of state law to necessitate the broad policy change.

Even as lawmakers returned to work at the Capitol early this month, it remained unclear whether Republicans with a supermajority would push for a return to the old recovery system. Senate President Randy McNally, for example, would favor even more restrictions, showing how difficult it is to sell the issue in Tennessee.

“In general, I am not in favor of criminals voting. I think they committed a serious crime, a serious crime against the state,” McNally told the AP earlier this month. “And until they get out of prison and are pardoned or acquitted for what they did, they forfeit that right. .”

At least the only person approved for voting rights restoration under the new system did not get into trouble in court. A judge restored his “full citizenship rights” in September, and the state elections office restored his voting rights in November.

Criminal defense attorney John Pellegrin said he helped his client get a judge to restore his citizenship rights, but was not involved in filing any voting restoration documents. The new stricter requirements were news to him.

“I only really found out about the change after we had already implemented it,” Pellegrin told the AP. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the director of Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote is Blair Bowie, not Blair Bowe.