A pair of state lawmakers are pushing to permit prisoners with felony convictions to vote — undoing a constitutional modification authorized many years in the past.
If authorized, it will set again the clock 20 years to when voters backed the prisoner voting ban.
“We know that the Legislature made great strides in voting rights last session, but as Black and brown people continue to be disenfranchised in state prisons and houses of correction across the commonwealth, our work is really far from over,” state Sen. Liz Miranda of Boston informed the Joint Committee on Election Laws throughout a listening to Thursday.
Miranda’s proposal, just like one other supplied by state Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven of Somerville, would undo a constitutional change proposed by then Acting Gov. Paul Cellucci in 1997 and authorized by the voters in 2000 which eliminated the appropriate for incarcerated felons to vote in Massachusetts elections. Cellucci, in 2001, would increase the rule to ban voting by felons serving time in presidential and municipal elections.
Before the change in 2000, the 2 lawmakers defined to the committee, it was routine for candidates and incumbents to go to prisoners of their districts, for the reason that state had allowed them to vote from its constitutional founding till then. Now, Miranda mentioned, these kind of interactions merely don’t happen.
“The commonwealth is currently disenfranchising 4,982 people,” she mentioned. “We have come to understand felony disenfranchisement’s role in exacerbating political and racial equality.”
According to Paul Craney, a spokesperson for the MassFiscal watchdog group, the change within the regulation made 20 years in the past represents the need of the voters.
“(The) amendments to overturn 23 years of precedent and overturn the overwhelming will of the voters is incredibly harmful to our elections and the victims of crimes. This is an opportunity for commonsense lawmakers to publicly draw a very clear distinction with the fringe of the Legislature,” Craney mentioned in a press release.
The joint committee has till April 26 to advance or kill the laws. Prisoners can vote as soon as they full their sentence.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”