A group of Democratic lawmakers in Georgia filed legislation this week that would give people who have been convicted of a felony the right to vote.
Rep. Josh McLaurin, a Democrat representing Atlanta, said that the current law is “rooted in racism,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Over 200,000 of our fellow citizens in Georgia are denied [voting rights] because of a racist policy that was enacted nearly 150 years ago,” McLaurin said at a press conference. “After the Civil War, Georgia adopted a policy of disenfranchising people convicted of felonies as a strategy to exclude black people from participating in democracy.”
Georgia’s constitution prohibits those who have been convicted of a “felony involving moral turpitude” from voting until they’ve served their sentences, completed probation and parole, and paid any fines.
But because the constitution doesn’t provide a legal definition for what constitutes “moral turpitude,” election officials have consistently interpreted that to mean any felony.
“After the Civil War, Georgia adopted a policy of disenfranchising people convicted of felonies as a strategy to exclude black people from participating in democracy,” McLaurin said. “The real question is, are these people citizens and, as citizens, do they have the right for their voice to be heard by elected officials? And the answer to that is yes.”
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger updated his office’s position ahead of the November election, saying that those who had completed their prison sentences could still vote even if they had remaining fines to pay or were still on probation.
The average probation in Georgia is more than six years — almost double the national average, according to prison reform advocate Maxwell Ruppersburg. Georgia also has more people on probation than any other state in the country, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, at more than 419,000.
“These are now working, tax-paying citizens, but as the law currently sits, they are excluded from the voting process, which is a modern-day and clear example of ‘taxation without representation,'” state Rep. Gregg Kennard said.
This is not the first time a chamber of the Georgia Legislature has examined the issue of extending voting rights to felons. A bipartisan Senate panel considered whether it would support legislation to restore voting rights to felons in 2019, making several proposals that afforded varying degrees of voting rights, but the committee voted 3-2 against pursuing any option, with the Republicans on the committee all voting against.
