Mississippi lawmakers move toward restoring voting rights to 32 felons as broader suffrage bill dies
JACKSON, ma’am. — Mississippi lawmakers on Monday introduced bills to restore voting rights to 32 people convicted of felonies, weeks after a Senate leader rejected a broader bill that would have restored voting rights to many more people with criminal records.
The move is necessary because of Mississippi’s piecemeal approach to restoring voting rights to people convicted of crimes and who have paid their debts to society. It also reflects the legacy of the original list of disenfranchisement crimes that emerged from the Jim Crow era. The attorneys who filed a lawsuit challenging the list say the authors of the state constitution revoked voting rights for crimes they believed black people were more likely to commit.
To restore voting rights, people convicted of any of these crimes would need to be pardoned by the governor or convince lawmakers to pass individual bills specifically for them, with two-thirds approval from the House of Representatives and the Senate. Lawmakers have passed few of those bills in recent years, and they won’t pass any in 2023.
“I certainly don’t think this is the best way to do this,” said Republican Rep. Kevin Horan of Grenada, chairman of the House Judiciary B Committee. “There comes a time when individuals who have paid their debt to society, pay taxes, do the things they need to do. There is no reason why those individuals should not have the right to vote.”
Despite lawmakers’ dismay with the current process, some are seeking to restore voting rights to select individuals. On Monday, lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees passed a total of 32 bills. The bills were introduced after a hearing in the House of Representatives on Wednesday highlighted the difficulties some former felons face in regaining voting rights.
Mississippi is one of 26 states that revoke people’s right to vote because of criminal convictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Under the Mississippi Constitution, people lose the right to vote for ten crimes, including bribery, theft and arson. The state’s previous attorney general, a Democrat, issued a ruling in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber theft and carjacking.
In 1950, Mississippi removed burglary from its list of disenfranchisement crimes. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Lawyers representing the state in one lawsuit argued that these changes “cure any discriminatory taint,” and the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2022.
Two lawsuits in recent years have challenged Mississippi’s disenfranchisement. The U.S. Supreme Court said in June that it would not reconsider the 5th Circuit’s 2022 decision. The same appeals court heard arguments on the other case in January and did not rule.
In March, the Republican-controlled Mississippi House passed a bill that would have allowed automatic restoration of voting rights for anyone convicted of theft, obtaining money or property by false pretenses, forgery, bigamy or “any crime committed in subsequent opinions from the Attorney General were interpreted as disenfranchising. .” But the bill died after Senate Constitution Committee Chair Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune, refused to bring it up.
Horan said the Republican House majority would only introduce individual suffrage bills for those who have committed nonviolent offenses and have been released from custody for at least five years. Democratic Rep. Zakiya Summers of Jackson said she appreciated the House and Senate committees for passing the individual bills, but decried the death of the larger House bill.
“This failed action plus the testimony we received at last week’s hearing is proof that the system is broken,” Summers said. “We must right this historic, oppressive injustice by passing legislation that fully reinstates everyone who has been disenfranchised despite conviction.”
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Associated Press reporter Emily Wagster Pettus contributed to this report. Michael Goldberg is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.