Tuesday, September 10, 2024

How Tennessee Keeps Nearly Half a Million People from Voting

While nearly all states suspend or withdraw people's right to vote when they are convicted of felonies, most allow restoring that right after they have served their sentences. Tennessee has moved in the opposite direction, making the process significantly more difficult. (Think: bureaucratic maze from hell.) About 9 percent of the state's voting-age population is prohibited from voting because of felony convictions.

Posted by tonyroma at 11:31 AM | 23 COMMENTS | permalink

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The Opinion video above takes viewers to Tennessee, the Volunteer State, the capital of country music and the birthplace of Davy Crockett and the MoonPie - and a national leader in voter disenfranchisement.

The state has come about that last claim to fame through its handling of voting access for people convicted of felonies.

The effects are particularly acute among the Black population, with an astonishing 21 percent of Black adults barred from voting - the highest rate in the country.

Among them is Sarah Bynum, a community advocate convicted of a felony 30 years ago who has struggled to restore her voting rights and is featured in the video above. "Makes me feel like I'm a foreigner in my own country," she laments.

More GOP voter shenanigans to keep those people from casting ballots in Tennessee elections.

"But voter fraud" .... that doesn't really exist in numbers to sway any election in America. Our priorities are backwards, just like the GOP wants them to be.

#1 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-09 01:46 PM

Have they tried not committing crimes?

#2 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-10 12:03 PM

Have they tried not committing crimes?

#2 | POSTED BY TOR

After paying their debts to society.

Yes.

But. Staying clean doesn't seem to be helping.

I wonder which is easier in Tennessee. Getting your voting rights back or getting your gun rights back.

#3 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-09-10 12:12 PM

No I mean have they tried not committing felonies to begin with?

#4 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-10 12:21 PM

Yet the Republican nominee for president can vote

#5 | Posted by truthhurts at 2024-09-10 12:23 PM

You can run for office but not vote for that person
Ahhhh logic

#6 | Posted by truthhurts at 2024-09-10 12:24 PM

Did Trump try not committing felonies in the first place?

#7 | Posted by e1g1 at 2024-09-10 12:26 PM

"Did Trump try not committing felonies in the first place?"

I doubt it.

If trump was poor he'd claim he was raised by criminals and it wasn't his fault he didn't know right from wrong.

#8 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-10 12:30 PM

No I mean have they tried not committing felonies to begin with?

Where in the Constitution does it say that released criminals can have their constitutional rights taken away permanently by the state?

And let's not even get into how felony charges are far more prevalent for black suspects than white ones. The studies on that are numerous.

And also let's not forget that many of these felons were convicted on non-violent drug charges often not having to do with trafficking-level distribution.

The regulations are being used to intentionally disenfranchise the group with the most predominance, stemming from the white backlash after Reconstruction. Blacks were charged with felonies for being in certain public spaces after dark. These laws were intentionally created to dilute black voting strength because citizens had the audacity of electing black representatives and senators after the Civil War in the southern states. This is nothing but white retribution - now seen as another legal racist legacy by those who simply don't know their history as well as they should.

#9 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 12:32 PM

Constitution is silent on this matter but it also predates prisons.

Execution was much more common back then.

#10 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-10 12:38 PM

No I mean have they tried not committing felonies to begin with?

#4 | POSTED BY TOR

I know what you meant but it's kind of a stupid question. At least until time travel is invented.

Don't you think?

People are not perfect and they screw up. Should they be punished forever even if they have paid their debts? Wouldn't that be cruel and unusual punishment?

Once they have paid their debt to society then wouldn't it be justice to restore their civil rights ?

#11 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-09-10 12:47 PM

Constitution is silent on this matter but it also predates prisons.

What do you mean "predates prisons"?

That's not what I found. There were only a few state disenfranchisement laws from the Constitution's signing up until Reconstruction.

After that, these laws exploded to keep newly-freed slaves from threatening white majority rule, period, end of sentence.

#12 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 12:48 PM

"Constitution is silent on this matter but it also predates prisons."

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

#13 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-09-10 12:50 PM

from threatening white majority minority rule, ...

#14 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 12:50 PM

Can you tell me when the first prison was built in Virginia? Not a jail a prison meant to house inmates for over 10 years.

#15 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-10 05:26 PM

#15

The Virginia State Penitentiary cornerstone was laid August 19, 1797, near the intersection of what is today Belvidere and Spring Streets,

virginiahistory.org

Is your search engine broken? I'm not getting your point here because you're solidifying mine.

#16 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 05:35 PM

I'm seeing conflicting information but the point remains that execution used to be a lot more common.

#17 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-10 05:37 PM

Ah, I see now. But you're still wrong.

The oldest prison was built in York, Maine in 1720. The very first jail that turned into a state prison was the Walnut Street Jail. This led to uprisings of state prisons across the eastern border states of America.

en.wikipedia.org

So, no, prisons came 67 years before the Constitution.

#18 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 05:40 PM

#17

No doubt, but not all crimes were subject to capital punishment regardless of the year.

#19 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 05:41 PM

In those times, quite a few "sentences" were to indentured servitude where the state itself no longer had responsibility for the convicted.

In the colonial period, Annapolis and Baltimore were major ports of entry for forced laborers called indentured servants from Europe. The Ridgelys purchased indenture contracts for at least 300 people between 1750 and 1800. Most of these servants had been convicted of crimes in England and Ireland.

www.nps.gov

Not exactly the same topic, but tangential.

#20 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-10 06:16 PM

Plus the Constitution says The Right To Vote Shall Not Be Denied, based on any type of previous servitude. I would argue that Penal Servitude is a type of servitude!!

#21 | Posted by FLMason at 2024-09-10 07:33 PM

Since you seem to be much better at researching than I at this point can you tell me what the ratio of execution to imprisonment was back in those days?

#22 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-11 12:47 PM

Sad that the same people who are so happy to deny these people the right to vote because of convictions for felonies that ithey srved their sentences for but they aren't bothered at all that a man convicted of multiple felonies and is running for President and hopes to use that high office to psrdon himdelf for his crimes if he wins. If he loses he will no longer be eligible to tvote in Florida and will have to serve his sentences. N ot to worry, his Culy of Insanity will try to elect heir favorite convicted felon to protect him from serving the sentences he has earned even as he commits new crimes of election interference by threatening election officials with arrests and prison sentences if he loses this coming election

#23 | Posted by danni at 2024-09-11 11:29 PM

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