Black leaders are accusing Baltimore election officials of erroneously canceling the voter registration applications of hundreds of ex-felons and refusing to correct the problem before the deadline for next month’s election.
About 420 ex-felons received an undated and unsigned letter from the city’s election board asking them to contact the office to verify eligibility. But the letter is missing a phone number where it directs applicants to call, and when none did, their applications were not processed, said NAACP Baltimore City Branch President Marvin “Doc” Cheatham.
“You would think a third-grader mailed this letter,” Cheatham said. “How can you expect someone to respond if you don’t give them a phone number?”
Cheatham said he alerted city Elections Director Armstead Jones of the problem more than one month ago. Jones refused to mail a corrected letter, Cheatham said.
Jones said the State Board of Elections did not authorize him to resend the letters, which were printed on stationery that had his office’s phone number at the bottom. He called Cheatham’s complaints “personal,” saying the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People president applied for his job, and didn’t get it.
“People can read and think for themselves,” Jones said. “Or you look the number up if it’s not in the body of the letter.”
Maryland’s General Assembly in 2007 restored voting rights to ex-felons who complete their sentences. Ex-felons are eligible to vote if they have completed their court-ordered sentence, including parole and probation.
Kimberly Haven, executive director of Justice Maryland, a criminal justice advocacy group, said the right to vote is an important step for felons’ re-entry into the community.
“It was groundbreaking,” Haven said of the new law. “To find out now we are continuing the disenfranchisement is not acceptable.”
Local lawmakers including state Sen. Verna Jones and Baltimore City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, both city Democrats, joined Cheatham and Haven in a news conference Friday outside the city’s election offices.
Some suggested the letter was intentionally incomplete to suppress the votes of black male Democrats.
“This might be a bigger issue,” Jones said. “I don’t want to think that, but I have to.”
The voter registration deadline for the Nov. 4 election was Oct. 14.
