It’s been a while since I’ve talked politics, so I’ll start with a smattering of thoughts on recent events before getting to the main discussion of voting rights.
First, let me direct your attention to a powerful post at Obsidian Wings about Mbaye Diagne and his role in personally saving hundreds of people during the Rwandan genocide 13 years ago. I’ve read a lot about Rwanda, but I had never heard this particular story. It made me cry, and also feel a fierce pride in the human race at the same time. It’s stories like this that remind me how important a single person can be.
Heroes – David Bowie
“And the guns, shot above our heads
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be heroes, just for one day”
On the opposite side of the spectrum is global warming – a problem that is intensely communitarian and absolutely must be understood in that fashion. Climate change was the subject of one of my first politically oriented postings back in November, and I’m happy to report that a small, but meaningful, step has been taken to deal with the problem. Last week, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Mass v. EPA, siding with the states.
We spent the whole year arguing that Anthony Kennedy would be the crucial swing vote, and amazingly enough on the final day of the debate season, it turned out to be true. For the first time, the Court has recognized that litigants have legal standing on the issue of global warming, and it puts the burden on the executive branch to justify not regulating CO2 emissions. This administration seems unlikely to rise to the task, but it substantially strengthens the hand of whoever comes in on January 20, 2009.
Speaking of the election, what’s the latest in that neck of the woods?
First, statistics on first quarter fundraising have been released. The biggest story is Barack Obama raising nearly as much as as Hillary Clinton, and even beating her in terms of primary-money. Moreover, his funds came from 100,000 separate donors, which is a truly staggering number. We all knew this was going to be a record-breaking year in terms of the amount raised, but there is something special about raising $20 million from that many people. It means that a huge portion of Obama’s support came from ordinary people like me, donating the limited amount we can, rather than coming mostly from the super-rich.
My $50 doesn’t mean much on its own, but when combined with small amounts from thousands of others turns into something a little more profound. I like what it says about Obama’s campaign and about the level of political engagement from those hoping for a progressive change in the White House.
I will say, though, that at some level the amount of money being raised is depressing. We are talking about a billion dollars that will be spent by November, 2008. Imagine if that money went to something worthwhile.
Still, it’s nowhere close to how much the current administration has funneled into a war which has killed tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people, or into tax cuts for the super-rich. A billion sounds like a lot but it still doesn’t really compare to what gets spent on making food with high fructose corn syrup or designer drugs for rich people or marketing the next terrible rock band. And if people are going to be spending tons of money on things that are existentially useless, I suppose politics isn’t the worst place for some of it to go. And if the end result can be a president with the desire and the mandate to make some serious changes, it will be money well spent in the end.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney raised a ton of money but is still lagging far behind in every poll. Part of it may be due to distaste for his obvious pandering. In the most recent example, he recently claimed to have been a hunter for “pretty much [his] whole life” – by which he means he’s been hunting twice. I can’t decide whether it’s tragic or comic. That he feels the need to pander on the subject of guns is seriously depressing for what it says about the state of politics and personality, but it’s also just so ridiculous that I can’t help but laugh.
Happiness is a Warm Gun – The Beatles
“Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime”
The question I have for those who refuse to believe that one hunting trip when he was 15 makes him a bona fide hunter is whether they’re willing to extend the same logic to felons? After all, millions of felons are disenfranchised in this country, denied voting rights long after they have served their time in prison. According to this mentality: once a felon, always a felon; commit a felony at 18, and you still are denied the right to vote 50 years later. Apparently, to those in favor of disenfranchisement, a single action long in the past is enough to formulate one’s essential identity for the rest of their lives.
The issue is especially timely given that Florida governor Charlie Crist has put his substantial resources behind the effort to restore voting rights to felons in his state. To be sure, Crist’s revisions do not eliminate voting restrictions, but they do make the hoops far less burdensome to jump through, and will automatically restore rights to a substantial section of the population.
This is crucial. Although 48 states (excluding only Maine and Vermont who let anyone vote, even when they’re in prison) impose some restrictions on voting rights for felons, Florida’s rules were uniquely devastating, with a virtually absolute ban and a huge population making the state singlehandedly responsible for almost one-fifth of those disenfranchised nationwide by such restrictions. In their most recent elections, almost 1 million people in Florida were stripped of the right to vote. That is a staggering number, especially when you consider that over 200,000 of them are black men. That is almost ONE-THIRD of the black men in the state.
Mathematics – Mos Def
“And even if you get out of prison still livin’
join the other five million under state supervision
This is business, no faces just lines and statistics
from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits”
And that is the crux of the matter. As offensive as the very notion of treating the right to participate in democratic politics as a legitimate punishment for a criminal violation may be, it is the obvious and disproportionate racial impact which makes felon disenfranchisement so far beyond the pale.
It should not be surprising that most felon voting laws were put into place during Reconstruction with the overt intention of limiting the democratic power of black communities. While states have been forced to re-tool their laws to remove the “intentional” discrimination, the effect remains exactly the same. The combined effect of racial bias in investigating and prosecuting criminal violations means that while the felon voting restrictions may be facially neutral, it is impossible to deny their intensely racialized effect.
These laws magnify the effect of a felony conviction, mark those who have committed a crime as a blight on the “just” community, flag them as dangerous to the very notion of politics, and in doing so reinforce the idea that there does (and ought to) exist a permanent underclass of those who have failed to meet our standards for political existence. The message from mainstream society is clear: “you are not a citizen and do not deserve the privileges which accompany citizenship.” This symbolic marginalization runs counter to every principle our country was founded on.
Moreover, felon disenfranchisement further disempowers those communities which already have the weakest voice by stealing millions of votes from communities who could use that leverage to make some small difference.
For a country that considers itself a democracy, that is beyond offensive.
So, for his efforts to lessen the damage of this policy, I commend Governor Crist for taking a political risk to do what is right.