THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT — already notorious for creating super -gerrymandered congressional districts and an unusual alliance between the Republican party and the Congressional Black Caucus — may soon produce its strangest progeny: prison voting booths.

The tradition of denying the vote to imprisoned felons, which predates the American founding and is enshrined in the laws of 47 states, is “now under attack as illegal, and, worse, racist. Inmates in New York state are demanding the franchise. Their argument rests not on some far-fetched legal theory, concocted by jailhouse lawyers, but rather on a reading of the Voting Rights Act plausible to some legal experts.

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