Tag: vote

This is the first in a series of comments describing some of the 153 laws passed in 2019 restoring rights or delivering record relief in various ways.  The full report on 2019 laws is available here. Restoration of Civil Rights Voting  In 2019, eleven states took steps to restore the right to vote and to expand awareness of voting eligibility.  Our experience is that many people convicted of a felony believe they are disqualified from voting when they are not:  almost every state restores voting rights automatically to most convicted individuals at some point, if they are even disenfranchised to begin with. The most significant new re-enfranchisement laws were enacted in Colorado, Nevada and New Jersey, where convicted individuals are now eligible to vote except when actually incarcerated.  Colorado restored the vote to persons on parole supervision, while Nevada revised its complex system for restoring civil rights so that all people with felony convictions may now vote except while in prison.  In one of the final legislative acts of 2019, New Jersey’s governor signed a law limiting disenfranchisement to a period of actual incarceration, even in cases where a court has ordered loss of the vote for election law violations, immediately…

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