READ ABOUT IT

More Than a Sticker

By Sarah Kimball Stephenson | April 21, 2020

Tuscaloosa, Ala. — For people returning to society after serving time in prison, voting is more than just an "I Voted" sticker. Richard Williams, whose past convictions prevented him from participating in elections until his voting rights were recently restored, says, 'It gave me back some of my self-worth and made me feel like I was part of it. Like I matter."

In 2017, Alabama passed a law to remedy the confusion caused by the state's existing felon disenfranchisement policy. But as the 2020 election cycle approaches, voting rights advocates at Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a Washington, D.C.-based fair elections advocacy group, believe that 72% of Alabamians with past convictions, approximately 248,000 otherwise eligible voters, are still barred from voting booths due to misinformation and legislation that critics claim disproportionately affect black citizens.

According to the Alabama Department of Corrections, black men make up 54% of the prison population, but only 13% of the state population. Black voters in Alabama have been systematically disenfranchised since the founding of the state. When delegates of the Constitutional Convention of 1901 convened to write the Alabama Constitution, president John Knox declared, "And what is it that we want to do? Why it is, within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State." The Supreme Court confirmed this intent in the 1985 case, Hunter v. Underwood, when judges ruled that the vague standard of "moral turpitude," the standard used to disqualify voters, was established for racist purposes.

Yet, this law remained in place. In 2016, the Sentencing Project reported that 286, 266 Alabamians were still ineligible to vote under the existing felon disenfranchisement statute, 50% of them black. At the time, county registrars were given total discretion to define "moral turpitude," effectively revoking a person's right to vote permanently. They did not have a uniform list of convictions that met the criteria, leading to statewide inconsistencies and racial disparities.

In 2017, HB282 was passed, creating a standardized list of 46 felonies that disqualify citizens from voting. When people convicted of these crimes complete their sentences and pay court costs in full, they can apply for a Certificate of Eligibility to Register to Vote (CERV). This process is part of a bill from 2003. Once applied for, applicants must then wait 44 days while the Board of Pardons and Parole grants their eligibility. A person charged with a felony not on the list never lost the right to vote. The definitive list is meant to prevent inconsistencies and racially biased application of the law.

Secretary of State John Merrill touts the success of the bill, reporting that 96% of eligible black voters are currently registered, compared to 91% of eligible white voters. The state's voter registration website claims that Alabama is home to 3,543,181 registered voters, out of the state's 3,653,381 voting-age residents, leaving only 110, 200 unregistered eligible voters. Yet, CLC estimates that disenfranchised Alabama voters with former convictions represent double this figure.

John Paul Taylor, a fellow at Southern Poverty Law Center and field coordinator for voter registration says, "I don't know why [Merrill] keeps saying that…Nobody knows the real number, but it's not 96%." Calculations by the World Population Review 2019 show that only 66.4% of the state voting-age population is registered. Maine has the highest percentage of registered voters, still only at 77% of the voting-age population, and never revokes voting rights from people who are incarcerated.

Who is going to tell them?

When HB282 was passed, Merrill declined to conduct a public information campaign to notify people with convictions who may have previously been told they had permanently lost their voting rights, despite a preliminary injunction filed by the CLC requesting automatic restoration for voters who had been previously told they were ineligible and mandatory notification to people's whose voting rights status may have changed.

Merrill says that when the law was passed, he visited halfway houses, community centers and any other establishment that requested a visit, but he deemed efforts beyond that unnecessary because of record-breaking election turnout in the past four statewide elections. He advises people interested in the rights restoration process to visit the state's voter registration website or contact the Board of Pardons and Parole which handles the CERV process.

For returning citizens struggling to secure basic needs like employment and housing, accessing the voter registration site can be a costly and time consuming process, one that they might decide isn't worth it, says Taylor. Just this year, the legislature passed a bill funding broadband infrastructure for the more than half a million citizens with no reliable internet connection. While the BOPP has an extension especially for voting rights inquiries, it automatically disconnects when selected.

In the past, Merrill has had to publicly correct his statements on the rights restoration process. In a press conference on October 3, 2019, he said that people who had committed crimes that were not on this list of crimes of moral turpitude immediately had their rights restored upon completion of their sentence. SPLC claims that this characterization is misleading because if a person committed a crime that is not on the list, they never lost their right to vote. They also noted that under no circumstances are voters automatically registered.

Brock Boone of the Alabama ACLU asserts that the Secretary of State's office must be held accountable in order to correct this misinformation. He and other ACLU activists have helped restore the rights of thousands while working in the field, but advocacy organizations lack access to resident addresses, criminal records, and voter status that would be necessary to inform the near 250,000 people who are still disenfranchised. Such resources are readily available only to the Secretary of State's office. This is especially true for Alabama's most vulnerable populations, like transient communities and those living in rural areas, according to Taylor of SPLC.

Prior to the law's passage, Blair Bowie of Campaign Legal Center recalls, "A lot of people who tried to register to vote during that time were told, 'No, you have a crime of moral turpitude.' So they would get something in the mail telling them they couldn't vote." According to the list of who received these flyers, Bowie says about 70,000 people had received these flyers informing them they were permanently ineligible to vote because of prior convictions.

Every election, the state sends out information to registered voters with information such as their polling place and district. Bowie wonders, if the resources for this are available, why couldn't Merrill use the list of formerly incarcerated people who received flyers to send them another flyer about the policy change?

Placing the responsibility on grassroots organizations to inform former felons of their voting rights has its own challenges. Carol Prickett of the Tuscaloosa League of Women Voters recalls her experience hosting voter drives sponsored by the organization.

"A bunch of silver-haired white ladies sitting outside a Piggly Wiggly hollering at black and Hispanic customers about whether they're registered to vote appears partisan even when it's not." Stereotypes and race relations may cause distrust among organizations trying to help marginalized communities, rendering their efforts less effective, Prickett says.

The value of hearing confirmation about one's voting rights status from the government itself cannot be understated, Prickett says. "When anyone is turned away from the polls, they're probably not coming back for a long time," she says. For anyone, not being able to exercise the right to vote can be frustrating. For black Alabamians who have endured decades of Jim Crow laws and arbitrary barriers to the polls, like literacy tests requiring them to correctly guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to vote, this frustration is compounded.

Statutory Concerns

The new law's effectiveness at reducing racial disparities remains in question by voting rights advocates. The list of convictions that constitute crimes of moral turpitude target black offenders more than whites, says Bowie.

She says that the majority of felonies listed in HB282 requiring a CERV to restore voting rights have higher conviction rates of black people than whites. Only two crimes on the list are considered white-collar crimes, typically associated with white perpetrators. They are securities fraud and forgery. Bowie also says that forgery charges are often applied to bad checks, which primarily affects black individuals.

Bowie recalls that while this bill was being debated, Representative Mike Hubbard was convicted of embezzling $2.3 million from public funds. Yet embezzlement is not on the list of disqualifying convictions. She says that embezzlement "seems to be a bigger betrayal of public trust than theft," which is a disqualifying conviction.

Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, founder of The Ordinary People Society and a former inmate himself who served on the committee that wrote HB282 alongside conservative voices from the Alabama Policy Institute and the Eagle Forum, recalls that black activists "were so busy fighting black folks' crimes, mostly drug possession, that we didn't even know the extent of embezzlement. They used our naieveness to leave out crimes that don't pertain to black folks." Merrill says it has been too long since the committee for him to recall why some of these crimes were left off.

Furthermore, Merrill says that people incarcerated for misdemeanors and non-disqualifying felonies are able to vote via absentee ballot while in prison. This process would require them to write a letter to the local circuit clerk requesting an absentee ballot application, along with providing photo identification.

Sofia McDonald, law fellow at Equal Justice Initiative who frequently serves clients in the prison system, alleges that basic resources aren't available to inmates in Alabama prisons. She says, "Yesterday, I was giving clients pieces of paper so they could write home to their family because they couldn't get phone call requests to talk to their family." If inmates do not have access to paper or phone calls, they likely don't have the means to write and mail a request for an absentee ballot or make a photocopy of their ID, if they even have one, McDonald said.

In contradiction to Merrill's statement, Samantha Banks, public information specialist for Alabama Department of Corrections says that inmates are not allowed to vote in state correctional facilities.

Using Confusion

Some government officials who are supposed to facilitate rights restoration for returning citizens also seem to be in the dark about the process. Taylor remembers an occasion when he went to the Board of Pardons and Parole substation in Birmingham without identifying himself as an SPLC employee and asked how to go about getting his voting rights back. Instead of giving him a CERV, they offered him a pardon form, which is not necessary for rights restoration of most crimes.

He says this kind of confusion makes people decide restoring their rights isn't worth it because, "They get something official from the Board of Parole saying something is wrong [with the application] and they don't question it. They just go away and give up." While these systems may not be actively discouraging or denying former offenders' right to vote, the spread of confusion effectively deters them from trying, he says.

Taylor suggests that better training and information to government employees who control the process would reduce these kinds of errors. Banks of ADOC says that classification officers- prison officials who are assigned inmates to help throughout their sentence- are trained in the rights restoration process. But activists and those who have endured the process have experienced otherwise in some cases.

Williams, who recently went through the rights restoration process, recalls that his parole officer "did not have a clue if he could vote or not." He had applied to vote several times and had his application rejected because his parole officer and other government officials did not inform him that he had to file a CERV to register.

Williams said he was given multiple excuses, that he needed an extensive background check and that because he still had cases in Oklahoma and Texas with remaining obligations, he could not vote here. The state law only requires cases in Alabama to be completed before a person can have their rights restored. "I almost gave up," he says. When Williams encountered Taylor, who helped him file a CERV, he says the process took five minutes. Fourty-four days later, on the deadline to register for the next election, he received confirmation that he could register again.

Having successfully registered, Williams says "For [the parole officer] to perpetuate a lie, even if they didn't know it was a lie, is ridiculous." Parole officers, who are typically the go-to source of information for people re-entering society should recieve adequate training on the rights restoration process to avoid the spread of misinformation, Taylor suggests.

Stepfon Lewis, whose 2017 campaign for Tuscaloosa mayor became a model of the ins and outs of the rights restoration process, recounts his convoluted experience with the CERV process. Lewis never had his voting rights restored after serving time for a felony conviction in 1992, and he needed these rights to run. He says, "Nobody ever told me that I didn't have them. You know they took them and they never told me that they took them, like are you just supposed to know?"

On the last day to qualify for the race, he had not received confirmation of rights restoration despite having been told by Merrill he had been approved. He said he was told that the registrar's office couldn’t find it, it wasn't ready, someone else had to sign off, or he still had to pay remaining fines and fees. He says, "I showed them the receipts. And everyone knew the climate. They knew this guy had to have it today."

Black Activists Face Backlash

Accusations hurled at Lewis questioning the legitimacy of his voting rights status follow a several similar cases of backlash against black voting rights activists. Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, whose case against the state initiated the conversation about felon disenfranchisement back in 2003, believes he is being targeted with maximum penalty charges due to his outspoken activism about felon disenfranchisement.

Glasgow has been one of the most prominent activists for voting rights restoration the black community of disenfranchised citizens, but is currently facing charges for complicity in a capital murder. He was helping a neighbor find his car that had been stolen, when the vehicle they were searching for, driven by a woman on the verge of a mental breakdown, rammed their car four times. While Glasgow was protecting the other passengers, the driver began shooting at the woman, eventually killing her. Everyone else, including the shooter had their charges dropped, but Glasgow has been awaiting trial for 18 months, despite never laying a finger on the gun. These charges came the day after he spoke at a March for Our Lives rally against gun violence.

Another black voting rights pioneer, Faya Rose Toure, whose Vote or Die campaign mobilized black voters with former convictions to help elect U. S. Senator Doug Jones in the 2017 special election, was jailed in 2018 for moving campaign signs of a white candidate from a public median that she says were placed illegally. During this election cycle, she said that signs for black candidates were removed from public property, while signs for white candidates remained. She had complained to Montgomery city hall of this problem a few days prior, but no action was taken, she said.

The 73-year-old woman was arrested in front of her 11-year-old granddaughter. Police refused to let her call someone to pick up the girl, according to her husband, former state senator Hank Sanders. She was held in the city jail on a $2,000 bond until the election day, preventing her from mobilizing voters. When her husband visited her at the police station, there was a large sign on display in support of the candidate whose sign Toure had removed, said Sanders. In July of 2019, she sued the Selma Police Department for $4 million, charging the department with injuries from unlawful detainment and mental anguish.

Paving a Path to the Polls

Despite remaining barriers to the polls, black Alabamians persist in their mission to extend access to the polls for people disenfranchised under this new policy. On December 6, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Voting Rights Advancement Act, sponsored by U.S. Representative Terri Sewell (D-Ala). Congress previously had the power to compel states with histories of minority voter suppression to submit any changes in voting rights policies, such as felon disenfranchisement laws, to the federal government. This authority was eradicated in the 2013 Supreme Court case, Shelby County v. Holder.

This new piece of legislation restores federal jurisdiction to holds states including Alabama, accountable for racially discriminatory voting rights laws. However, the Republican-led Senate has announced it will not pass this law because it infringes on states' rights, according to Representative Doug Collins of Georgia.

In lieu of changes that could come from the Voting Rights Advancement Act, Bowie and Boone suggest that further action by the Secretary of State to inform eligible individuals of their rights is the most effective solution, although Merrill has said he would not enact these measures multiple times. Public education campaigns for citizens disenfranchised by the law as well as better training for the facilitators of the rights restoration process would reduce human errors that cause confusion and spread misinformation, say activists from the ACLU, CLC and SPLC.

Reform advocates propose an automatic voter registration system that restores the rights of returning citizens once they complete their sentence. Automatic voter registration (AVR) is currently being used to register all eligible voters in 15 states, including Georgia and Florida. These programs allow visitors to the DMV to register to vote when they come to receive or renew their driver's license. AVR through the DMV may disadvantage citizens without transportation, seniors and residents of rural areas, especially in predominantley black counties, which in Alabama have dealt with 31 DMV closings since 2015.

Alabama Arise, a nonprofit coalition that advocates for Alabamians living in poverty, estimates that the state could save $2mil a year using an opt-in automatic voter registration program. This would allow give people the option to register to vote while they are at the DMV if they so choose. Arise calculates that AVR would cost 3 cents per person, compared to the $7.67 it costs to register voters on paper.

John Merrill opposes this measure because he does not want to use state resources to implement such a system, but in actuality, there are potential financial benefits to implementing the AVR program, as indicated by a 2012 study by the Florida Parole Commission. Researchers determined voting reduces a person's chance of recidivism from 33.1% to 11%. Lower rates of incarceration contribute to further savings of taxpayer money.

For now, however, Alabamians returning from incarceration can utilize any of the resources provided by grassroots organizations, such as The Ordinary People Society, Rolling to the Polls, Vote or Die, Lift Every Vote, Woke Vote, Alabama ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center and Campaign Legal Center.

The voices of people who have served time are underrepresented in the electorate, but the decisions that come from voting affect them more than any other group of people. McDonald of EJI says, "The stakes are the highest for incarcerated people because they are affected most by the way our country and communities are run. Their voices are the most important here."