It’s late January in Jackson. At the Capitol, a group of Mississippians have gathered to talk to legislators about getting their right to vote back.
Among them is Jarvis Jones, who was convicted of armed robbery as a teenager and received a 15-year sentence.
In the years since, a lot has happened as he’s rebuilt his life and reentered society.
“I'm also a licensed professional counselor in the state of Mississippi,” Jones told a room full of people. “That means the state board looked at that and said, ‘Hey, we can give him a chance.’”
His question now is why the state can’t – or won’t – also restore his right to vote.
The room he’s speaking to is full of people who, like him, can’t vote because of a felony conviction.
Some of them are part of about 48,000 Mississippians who can’t vote and have completely finished the terms of their sentences – including probation and parole.
This year, measures in Mississippi to automatically restore voting rights to these folks died in committee, just a few days after their visit to the Capitol.
Across the border, in Louisiana, though, some of them would have no problem walking up to the ballot box.
“I think the biggest thing that we have going for us in Louisiana is for people on probation to, hands down, have voting rights,” said Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voice of The Experienced – or VOTE – an advocacy group based in New Orleans that focuses on issues faced by formerly incarcerated people, including voting rights.
“Nobody ever sentenced someone to probation wanting them to become less of a citizen.”
Louisiana automatically restores the right to vote after a person’s full sentence is complete. If you’re on parole, it’s restored if you go five years without being reincarcerated.
Reilly says since Louisiana's automatic restoration law came into effect in 2019, it’s helped connect people with each other and foster civic engagement.
“I definitely see in the community since the law passed, just an acknowledgement of folks who do have criminal convictions,” said Reilly.
“Regardless of what it is: you've made it out back into the community, whether it took you 40 years to get there or 40 days to get there.”
‘A long climb’
The changes to Louisiana law were pushed by VOTE through a lawsuit that resulted in the passing of Act 636.
“In our constitution, it doesn't say that ‘thou shalt disenfranchise anybody,’ – it actually says that everyone has the right to vote and then it creates this exception,” Reilly explained. “The legislature may suspend somebody's voting rights for order of imprisonment.”
Until 2019, that included people on parole and probation.
“An order of imprisonment doesn't sound like it applies to people on probation and barely sounds like it applies to people on parole,” said Reilly. “That was the basis of our lawsuit: the bill that ended up getting passed was a revision of who falls into that category.”
Much of the battle, Reilly says, was outside the court and the legislature.
“Our bill lost multiple times for just legislators, I think really just being entrenched in ‘too bad, you broke the law, you can't vote,’” Reilly said.
“That was ultimately what we're up against: with a cultural sort of understanding or brick wall or position that we just didn't belong anymore, so it was a long climb.”
Currently, about 55,000 people in Louisiana are disenfranchised, compared with the roughly 70,000 people who are disenfranchised in Mississippi.
The majority of disenfranchised people in Louisiana are in prison, followed by people on parole. In Mississippi, the majority of people who can’t vote are living post-sentence.
But, Louisiana disenfranchises for all felony convictions with incarceration, compared with the limited set of disenfranchising crimes in Mississippi.
And, Reilly says there are still some other things that act as barriers to voting in his state.
“In Louisiana, you have to get the certificate of eligibility piece and it's not clear who has to get it,” Reilly said. “It seems to us pretty darn clear that there's a limited group of people that actually do need a certificate.”
“But they're making people get the certificate that, let's say, they've been off their sentence for a long time, and or they never were registered previously.”
Those are things that can get complicated not just for people trying to register to vote, but also for those responsible for registration.
“People are not trained on it, they don't understand it,” Reilly said. “Some people are part-time workers, there's turnover: but the reality is most people these days get registered through the Office of Motor Vehicles and it creates a whole lot of confusion and frustration for a lot of people.”
VOTE is currently in court over the state’s requirement for previously registered felons to submit documentation when they go to register to vote again – people who weren’t active voters when they were convicted don’t have to submit those documents.
Trade-offs to the Louisiana model
Like with Mississippi, Reilly sees the history of voter suppression in Louisiana as an important consideration in the barriers of today, comparing their current restrictions and the certificate of eligibility to things like grandfather clauses or poll taxes.
“It's just another way to disrupt people's ability to just freely vote and be part of the democracy,” Reilly said.
Lily Moens, policy and research director for advocacy group Mississippi Votes, says a waiting period could equally cause confusion in Mississippi – and mean extra time and money for voters.
“A lot of the bills didn't specify what or how someone would prove that they reached the end of their waiting period,” said Moens. “To avoid any sort of potential liability on the voter's part by certifying that they have met all the conditions, there probably would have to be some sort of documentation or some sort of proof.”
And some of the bills use broad language to describe an “offense” in the waiting period. In Mississippi, 23 felonies disenfranchise you – a waiting period could complicate that without more specific language.
“Any intervening felony committed would make you ineligible, which, in a way, broadens that net,” she said. “If you have gotten to almost the end of the waiting period, and you commit a felony that is not technically on that list, then that puts you back in the position of being disenfranchised.”
But for Mississippi right now, with its lifetime ban, Moens says it’s about moving the needle bit by bit.
“We have a bill with a waiting period: that's not ideal, we would love to see automatic restoration upon release,” she said. “But does it remove a large chunk of the current crimes that are disenfranchising? Or does it provide automatic restoration upon that waiting period completion?”
“In which case, while it's not perfect, after five years that is going to meaningfully restore a large number of people's right to vote in the state.”
Those are all things that state Representative Kabir Karriem had to consider while crafting restoration bills this year – he included five-year waiting periods in his, similar to Louisiana.
“Let me be clear: I'm for automatic voter restoration; as soon as you are released, I think you should get your rights back,” said Karriem. “The five-year waiting period has always been the compromise.”
And they have to compromise, he says, because there's really not much appetite from other lawmakers on passing voting restoration measures.
And Karriem said, some of that may be based on fears of how disenfranchised Mississippians may vote or the party they might support.
“Next year is an election year: I don't know what the climate will be like, but we have to keep talking to leadership,” Karriem said, as well as having conversations with Mississippians most impacted by disenfranchisement.
And with the legislature’s passage of the Safeguard Honest Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, requiring local election officials to use federal immigration data to check voter citizenship, Karriem said it’s crucial to keep pushing for safeguards on voting rights.
“We're turning the clock back to a time of when individuals had to put up documentation to vote,” said Karriem “At this particular point, the state is going in the wrong direction, trying to make it easier for people to vote: we don't have a ballot initiative, we don't have early voting. “
“And now we’ve got the SHIELD Act that’s going to make it even more difficult for individuals – not just incarcerated folk – but people who just want to go to the polls and vote.”
