Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) grants that there are laws impeding the ability of black males to vote — they just have nothing to do with voter ID laws or the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Voting Rights Act.
The lawmaker testified this morning during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on mandatory minimum sentencing that the War on Drugs and the disproportionate and lengthy incarcerations of black men for drug-related crimes have disenfranchised the voting demographic to an extent that calls to mind a bygone era.
“If I told you that one out of three African-American males is forbidden by law from voting, you might think I was talking about Jim Crow 50 years ago,” Paul said. “Yet today, a third of African-American males are still prevented from voting because of the War on Drugs.”
Paul’s office cited a 2003 American University Law Review article entitled “The Exclusion of Felons in Jury Service” in making the claim, although some estimates mentioned in the article suggest a lower figure. His testimony also cited numbers from a Human Rights Watch report published in 2000 that reported while the majority of illegal drug dealers in the United States are white, three-fourths of all people in prison for drug offenses have been black or Latino.
Because mandatory minimum sentencing can carry harsh prison terms for drug-related crimes, and the overwhelming majority of states plus Washington, D.C. won’t restore the voting rights of felons until offenders have at least served their sentences — in 12 states, felons may lose their vote permanently, according to the nonprofit ProCon.org — felons face higher hurdles to retain their right to vote than Paul would prefer.
He has alluded to two solutions.
One, Paul mentioned during a constituent visit earlier this week that he hopes to advance a measure restoring felon voting rights five years after release from prison.
“We haven’t decided which crimes yet, but I think particularly for non-violent drug crimes where people made a youthful mistake I think they ought to get their rights back,” Louisville, Ky.’s NPR affiliate WFPL reported.
Paul also referenced during Wednesday’s hearing a “safety valve” bill he has introduced with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that would provide judges the “authority to impose a sentence below a statutory mandatory minimum.” Paul said that the requirements comprise a strict five-part test, and only about 23 percent of all drug offenders qualify.
The Kentucky senator differs from those who refer to the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate a portion of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) or state voter ID laws as chief concerns with black disenfranchisement. Paul said earlier this year that strong black turnout at the polls — on a percentage basis, it was higher than it was for whites in 2012 — shows that voter discrimination is no longer the issue it was during the civil rights movement.
Additionally, Paul said that those who liken voter ID measures to Jim Crow laws are misguided.
“I … think that some people are a little bit stuck in the past when they want to compare this,” Paul said. “There was a time in the South when African-Americans were absolutely prohibited from voting by selective applications of bizarre and absurd literacy tests. And that was an abomination, that’s why we needed the Voting Rights Act, but that’s not showing your ID.”
