Right now, the people most affected by these law-and-order changes don’t always get the opportunity to fight back at the ballot box. Most states ban felons from voting until their probation or parole is completed, while Iowa, Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia make the formerly incarcerated apply to get their rights back, a process so complicated — and prone to rejection — that few go through it. Only Maine and Vermont, the two whitest states in the country, allow felons to vote while in prison. Though many countries bar prisoners from voting, most automatically restore this right after a sentence is completed.
But change seems to be coming, especially in the South. More than 40,000 released felons were allowed to vote in Maryland last year, after the state legislature overrode a Republican gubernatorial veto. After his blanket pardon was struck down by the courts, Governor Terry McAuliffe individually restored the rights of more than 156,000 people in Virginia over the past year. Organizers in Florida, the state that has more disenfranchised felons than anywhere else in the country, are trying to get a ballot initiative ready for 2018 that would re-enfranchise voters before 2020.
And in Alabama, where Glasgow has been organizing for years, the formerly incarcerated have recently celebrated their own win. The state has a law stating that “no person convicted of a felony of moral turpitude” can vote. Inserted in the state constitution in 1901, it was explicitly designed to “establish white supremacy in this state,” as one politician in charge of drafting the document put it. Figuring out what “moral turpitude” meant, and which ex-felons could have their rights restored, was historically a subjective and confusing affair, differing from official to official. But in May, the Republican governor finally signed a bipartisan bill that defines what a crime of “moral turpitude” actually is — murder, sexual abuse, terrorism, etc. — clearing the way for many of the voters silenced by the drug war back into the fold. Some groups estimate that it could allow thousands more residents to vote. Glasgow even learned that he shouldn’t have lost his rights to begin with.
Other states are still resistant to change. Governors in Iowa and Kentucky signed executive orders expanding the franchise for felons that are soon to be reversed by their successors. Organizers in Louisiana are currently trying to open up voting to those on parole or probation, the same change that happened in Maryland in 2016. Earlier this year, a state judge upheld the prohibition, although he added, “I don’t like this ruling. I don’t like it. It’s not fair.”
There is still clear opposition to expanding felon voting rights, despite the bipartisan push for criminal justice reform, partly because voter suppression is tied up in ideology. (Felon disenfranchisement policies disproportionately affect minorities, which means they disproportionately affect Democrats.) Any attempts to expand suffrage, then, are written off as a partisan maneuver, despite the fact that why these laws exist in the first place is just as steeped in cynical strategizing. Shortly before becoming president, Donald Trump himself derided the push to expand voting rights in Virginia. “They are letting people vote in your Virginia election that should not be allowed to vote,” he told a rally on the campaign trail. “Sad. So sad.”