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.

"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.

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.

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

What do you mean "predates prisons"?

from threatening white majority minority rule, ...

#15

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

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

#17

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

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