If the majority of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals thinks Mississippi did anything “race-neutral” in the 1950s and 1960s, then it doesn’t much know this state’s history.
During those decades, Mississippi was at its racially worst. White Mississippi resisted court-ordered desegregation of schools and congressionally ordered protections of voting and other civil rights. The Ku Klux Klan used violence, and Citizens Councils used economic intimidation to try to preserve a political and social system based on a belief in white superiority.
To think that this same state would be progressive enough during that era to rid Mississippi law of what was an admittedly racist provision in the state’s 1890 constitution is ludicrous.
Yet, that’s the argument the majority on the appeals court accepted when it ruled that Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for certain felony convictions was constitutional because in 1950 and 1968 state lawmakers amended the list of disenfranchising crimes in ways that the court believes made the ban race-neutral.
Judge James Graves, who is Black and from Mississippi, was incredulous of the reasoning used by his fellow jurists on the Court of Appeals. To think that “a virtually all-white electorate and legislature, otherwise engaged in massive and violent resistance to the Civil Rights Movement” would cleanse the 1890 constitution of any part of its discriminatory intent defies reason, said Graves in his dissent.
Nevertheless, as a result of this flawed decision, Mississippi will continue to operate with voting rules for felons that are arbitrary.
For many crimes, voting rights in this state are withheld even decades after the offenders have served their sentence. For other crimes, offenders are able to vote even while they are behind bars.
Even if the courts are not going to force Mississippi to change the law, the Legislature should do so anyway out of logic and fairness. For a few violent crimes, such as murder and rape, a lifetime ban on voting is an appropriate part of the guilty party’s punishment. But for most crimes, particularly those of a nonviolent variety, voting rights should be automatically restored when offenders have completed their entire sentence.
That’s the way it works in most states.
Mississippi, with the highest incarceration rate in the world and one of the stingiest attitudes when it comes to forgiveness, is disenfranchising a disproportionate share of its population. That’s just not right, and it may contribute to the difficulty felons experience when they leave prison and try to integrate back into law-abiding society. They are made to feel like perpetual outcasts.
If we want former inmates to not return to a life of crime, we have to allow them to show they have learned their lesson. Restoring voting rights is a concrete way to demonstrate that Mississippi truly believes in second chances.
